Acceptable Losses
by Sideris
Summary: There are always those willing to sacrifice everything for the greater good at the cost of others.
1. CI

**Disclaimer**: This is a work of fan fiction. This author does not own any of the characters, setting, or anything in-between concerning Gainax's IP Neon Genesis Evangelion. I am but a simple caveman. The company gives the word and this thing vanishes from the Internet in moments.

_**Acceptable Losses**_

**C-I**

2009

The Crèche, NERV Second Branch 

There is an ending.

Whether it be through struggle, simple dithering through life, or passive acceptance, everything ends. Often feared and cast in such negative light for centuries, Man has no love of endings. Does life stop and simply fade away or is there more? No answers. The universe seems apt to keep its poker face and let things carry on until heat death. The trend is embraced with fervor unrivaled by even the most fanatical of zealots. Such is a world half empty.

Aki felt her ending draw nearer. And she relishes the thought. Freedom from everything that happened in these lonely halls and off-white rooms that held all memories, that is what she craves. There is nothing else.

Be it weeks or years, she'd find her ending.

The room is dark. A single harsh light shines in the corner, throwing bizarre shadows everywhere.

Her eyes lock onto the fig leaf covered name emblazoned on the wall of her modest cell. NERV. Her eyes trace the simple motto, 'God's In His Heaven…All's Right With The World." She bit back a giggle, running a hand through her cropped hair. The fittings remain nothing but bumps under her fingers, running all the way down from the brain stem to the spinal cord. She shivers.

_No God only scared men with needles. _The thought tickles her the right way. Laughter rings against the metal door, echoing deep inside her mind.

Fingers idly trace the dark cluster of veins standing out on the white flesh of her arm. She winces, the flesh tender and bruised, dabs of ochre and soot on alabaster.

All's Right With The World. _Then why'm I here? Where's Mother?_ She glances at the door.

The thought is cyclical, rote.

It's all that keeps her from falling apart in the darker nights within the Crèche. Her fingers clenched into bloodless fists, trembling. It'd be time for cocktails and tea soon. That'd be nice. A moment of peace. They ate thick potato soup this week with fresh cooked breads. A luxury. It'd help the meds settle. Maybe she'd not wake up from the nightmares then. Maybe. They constantly up the dosage. She acclimated to the big choking pills far too quickly. 'Tolerance,' they say. Doctor Tennyson hates her for it. Aki's bony fingers trace the shiner that covered her cheek. It didn't matter, no bones broke.

Not like last time.

Yes, the good doctor carries a grudge, one might say. The good doctor did not brook silence. Her bedside manner is the charm of the facility, didn't you know?

_Didn't you? You can speak up, child; I would just like your opinion. Don't you like me? Aren't I so nice? Why, I helped Doctor Palermo set Reese's broken arm! Stop staring and speak, Aki! Stop staring at me _you dead-eyed little bitch_! _

The slap made her ears pop, the doctor wears rings.

Aki smiles and shakes, drags her blanket over boney knees.

Slowly, she lies down on her cot and stares at the NERV emblem a while longer, tracing the fig leaf's contours and stylized veins. Sin is what the fig hides. Whose? All Aki could recall of anything is being a good little girl. Who is so afraid? The adults speak in hushed whispers of Second Impact. They speak of prevention.

When? Aki hadn't been born then, why did it concern her? The comet that fell had nothing to do with her. The wars and famines were over when the Crèche took her. They tell her she is special, fortunate, and other things she doesn't remember.

What sin did the fig leaf cover for her? There are no secrets, no sins. The leaf covers nothing. Aki bites down hard on her lip. She pictures the little house she once lived in: crooked frame on her wall, the spidery crack in the glass window, the apple trees growing in the rich soil, the red ocean turning violet at sunset.

The place called home.

Swimming in the clean red ocean, a lost pleasure. It warmed her, cheered her, it was harmless. The adults called it the ocean of blood. Lies.

Nothing like the blood dripped out of cuts after tests. Nothing like the blood Maddy puked all over the floor during the last battery of tests. It was darker than Aki recalled the ocean being, it didn't roll off of Maddy's face like the red water did after a swim. The blood pooled in Maddy's eyes when they went dead, thick as paint. Hemorrhage, the good doctor said. Extra rations, said the Children, deep past the hurt and the tears.

Aki misses the red seas. There is no taste of blood there. Nothing touched her. Not sadness, not people, not endings, not blood. A sea without memories, a fading voice always said in her mind from behind carefully sealed doors.

The tests are home. The LCL is her surrogate ocean. Yet she cannot swim.

The orange slurry shoving its way into her lungs reminds her of the red seas.

It took her memories away in the shock. She could breathe. Aki never breathed in the red seas. But in the Plug, in the dark, alone with thoughts only, she breathed underwater.

The only explanation is magic. Magic is real in the Crèche and no where else. The magic takes you over, only if you embrace it. If the magic is kind to you, you prosper, you eat, you get to sleep, and the good doctor pats your head with a smile. The adults smile and nod and talk of synchronization-survival estimates and potential in 'the real thing.' If the magic isn't kind to you, you starve, you bleed, and you witness the ministrations and will of the Old Men.

Aki believes this. Science, not magic, the doctors and technicians say. What the hell do they know? She once saw men try to breathe underwater and they died. A quiet memory.

She stood at a wide bay window overlooking a bridge, watching people throw rocks and shout at tall men wrapped in plastic, standing on big metal beasts settled on the bridge. Tanks belched flame and roared like the dragons of myth. _Hungry_, Aki remembers. _Everyone was just hungry_. The people screamed and rushed at the dragons, they fired and the people vanished. Red mist and bits and pieces floated down to the ground. A smoking forearm fell onto the dirt in front of the window. Fingers twitched and scraped furrows into the dirt. That arm grabs her when she sleeps. Twitching and choking her.

The crowd broke, people shoving, screaming, gnashing like trapped dogs to get away from the pile of writhing offal that had been their fellow rioters.

Dozens fell off the bridge into the canal. All they did was float. Float, float off into the ocean.

How can she breathe orange water when no one else can breathe red water? Science, they say. They never taught her that at home. A quiet corner of her mind knew it would end the mystery. Aki didn't want that ending. It kept her eyes bright.

Only one ending satisfies.

Aki draws up the covers, curling up against the cold air. Goose flesh crawls up her legs like a thing alive, a bony frame covered in stretched chicken skin. Tired.

The covers don't help. The shakes again. The pinprick scars lining her back ache in the cold. The pain stretches and contracts, growing and shrinking over and over again. Breathing hurt. She ignored the spot of blood growing on the sheets. Her mind withdrew deeper into the little box she saved for the beatings.

Everything ends. Her time by the ocean, at home, the apple tree she swung on, playing among so many friends with faces worn smooth in time, washed away. Her childhood is populated with mannequins. All sitting neatly in rows, whispering to one another. Aki remembers hugging them. She remembers skin like plastic. The sensation of life isn't there. Little context exists anymore.

Miss Amuro calls it 'water under the bridge.'

Aki laughed 'til she cried when she first heard that.

The speakers belt out a jingle. It's time to sleep already? Aki feels a thrill of pleasure spread through her, rolling over to reach down and pull out her auto-tab. The plastic injector always feels heavy in her hand. Strange images fill her head. Inflamed throats and choking sounds. Doctor Goodwin took detailed notes that night. 'Such fine data, we're making progress. Oh? Yes, yes, put her in the body bag.'

The images fade. A long time ago, that's all. The tabs hold vitamins and priceless sleep. Tabs help her ignore the constant chatter of the speakers in the ceiling. Eighteen hours a day, it prattles out the useless bullshit to help motivate the candidates. Learning to tune them out is a skill all candidates acquire.

"—one. God's In His Heaven and All's Right With The World. Be good little Children, take your vitamins everyday'—Aki slides the auto-tab right above her navel, hits the button, softly moaning when the euphoria hits her—'and grow strong. You are loved. Your mommies and daddies are so proud and you are not alone."

"Shut…up…" she says. Things feel too good for talk.

Aki's mouth dries up; teeth clench her bottom lip, watching the first bead of blood well up from her stomach. Spindly fingers wipe up the blood and draw across her tongue. The rich taste of iron and vitamins. Her eyes do their focusing trick and shut tight at the sudden, painful headache, head in a vise, tightening to the breaking point. No sobbing. That pleases her. There would be no satisfaction for _them_. The eyes and ears are everywhere.

No shame.

_Where's Mother?_

Yet Aki knows, knows, knows. Mother's watching.

She peels an eye open to stare at the gleaming camera lens right above the door. Before the relaxers claim her lucidity, she lurches to onside, vomiting. Not enough food, now she pays. The smell is excruciating. The room is spinning like turntables now, save clean up for tomorrow.

Her face streams when the dry heaves begin.

There would be no sobs from Cell Six-I. Not for Mother, not for God, not for anything or anyone.

As the speaker reminds them their every waking moment: God's In His Heaven.

Little girls never cry if He is there, right?

* * *

2011

Pribnow Testing Range, NERV Second Branch

The Entry Plug coruscates with white and black light. It polarizes and finally, sight. Faces stare at her on three pop-up screens.

"Begin activation protocols. Liven up, Six-I."

The plug is filled slowly with LCL, Aki's head rolling back to stare with dead eyes. Flat faces stare back at her expectantly. She smiles, vacant, opening her mouth and sucking down the LCL, breathing deep. The wrong tube, then coughing, hacking, she chokes for a minute. Anticipation filters back in. She is hungry for the fix.

Exasperated sighs from the observers, one of the techs laughs. Conversation just beyond hearing, Aki leans forward over the butterfly switches inside the plug, fascinated by a single bubble floating just beyond current pull.

_My magic…_

"Lean back, subject, we're beginning soon—when the hell is the dosage supposed to kick in?" The asshole, Yushida-man, starts to speak then covers his mike with a surreptitious look at Aki. She giggles.

_Everyone hates you, funny man. And it takes twenty minutes, six seconds._

They didn't stick her with enough this time. Not quick enough on the draw. She sighs, pleased, looking down at her bodysuit and feeling the drugs push through the tunnels and avenues inside. Used to all the traffic, the body adapts, takes more trash to pack its streets and slow things down.

She can feel numbness in her lower back, though. It's starting to work. A vague disappointment settles in her mind. Tolerance, they said. Aki just wants a bigger dose. But she's about to get all the Mix she could want. More than enough to have the stars come down from Heaven and whisper things that have been forgotten by the universe. It unlocks doors in her mind. Some that should stay closed.

Aki sucks in LCL, wetting her lips in anticipation. _Give it to me. Let me escape this place. Bring back the magic._

"How do you feel?" They know she's not going to say a word. The psychiatrists tried. The bridge crew certainly won't succeed.

Yushida-man sighs, nodding to a tech offscreen. "Begin."

Her seat slides forward and splits down the middle, revealing symmetrical rows of needle-tipped injectors. Aki bites her lower lip and feeling a rush of heat in her belly. Little frothing bubbles gather at the edge of her mouth, slip away in the filters.

_Give it to me._

The ringing in her ears builds up, screams that stab her eardrums in the night, the feeling of splitting in half. Aki settles back, face blank, mouth agape. The sharp points dig into her skin. She begins to hum a catchy little jingle.

* * *

Pribnow Unit, NERV Second Branch

The Pribnow Crew waits; activation is always a time for worry, so many variables and reaction-survivor curves. They lost three candidates in as many weeks. Yet the suits present weren't as worried about Six-I. This investment is merely one part of a greater whole.

"She takes to this crap like its candy." Yushida turns to the men who do not smile. Immaculately dressed, all of them, they contrast wildly with the steel, glass, wires, dirtied techs, and supercomputers all around. Each looked like a wax statue, freshly made and set down. His laughter dies and he turns attention back at the readouts coming up. "Um, well, we have little to worry about sirs. Every precaution is ready, medical teams are standing by in the eject bay."

An old man with dark glasses snorts, looking to the nervous Operations Director. The black lenses reflect the light so perfectly and the man's wrinkled face set so precisely, he can't read this man. And Anton Yushida prides himself at being able to read people. It's what got him this far. He couldn't remember this board member's name. Somehow that seems dangerous.

"You say that, and yet, you have three bodies on ice in your morgue ready to be incinerated after the autopsies are complete, no? I seem to recall you had medical teams on standby then as well. I wouldn't put so much faith in technology to save these children, Mister Yushida." The old man spat. His hidden gaze sweeps back toward the monitors.

Biting the inside of his cheek and sucking on the sudden sharp taste of blood, Anton forges ahead. Arguing with a financier would shorten his career to minutes. His life too. "Forg-"

The old man cuts him off, "This is the resonance cascade, yes? The subliminal synchronization?"

Yushida sups confidence from the shift of conversation, straightening up, "Yes, sir. It's the newest protocol we've devised for the child—er, candidates. It keeps them calmer without sedatives. The reactions of sedatives and the Mix itself are…well, you gentlemen have the reports." For a brief moment, he remembers the fate of Six-M. Aneurysm. What was his name? After the last few deaths, they all become one in his head.

The suits look at him, impassive as the mountains.

"Ah, as you see, Candidate Six-I has taken to it quite well. She's been the most pliable of the remainder. Nothing revolutionary, but…the results speak for themselves. Heh, we see her as our golden child." Relief runs through him, cooling as ice, when some of the Old Men nod approvingly.

"You will produce a serviceable product then? This process has been…costly, sir." Another, a man dressed in a charcoal-colored suit and cornflower blue eyes, spoke. Yushida nods quickly.

"Of course, of course! Doctors Goodwin and Tennyson are proceeding with the treatments of each of the six remaining candidates. Aki here shows the most promise." He paused. "At least, eh, s-sixty-eight percent chance of survival." He clams up and his skin pricks with sweat in the sudden heat flooding the room. Didn't they feel it?

Someone coughed behind him. The technicians remain blissfully unaware, tracking Aki's vitals and the start up of the induction. Certainly not looking at their boss cracking under pressure.

He can see the contempt amongst the Old Men.

The man in the glasses turns toward him. "Let us hope then, that your people can deliver on this most costly of projects, Mister Yushida. Competition is fierce and we shall need a working model in the next few years. Do well. And I don't care which is left by the end." With that, the Old Men turn and leave leisurely by the rear doors.

Like a pressure valve, Yushida let out the breath he had been holding, closing his eyes to regain his composure. A shaking hand brushes away the sweat and he glares at the techs that dare to look back. "Prep stage two…make her sing."

_You better live, kid._

Something isn't right. He _knows_ the Glasses Man. He was there when Project-M was introduced. He had asked questions, but stuck to the rear of the group of officials. Him and one other, though Anton can't recall him. They spoke in quiet whispers among the military personnel. High rollers. Who they were didn't matter. What matters is they hold his career by the balls. A simple word and done he is, eunuch he is.

Anton Yushida does _not _disappoint.

"Alright, let's go. Key the link and keep the Plug undervolt. Someone get me Doctor Goodwin, we need current data on the cocktail." He takes a proffered phone with a curt nod, dialing the doctor's line. The phone rings, the chirring noise settles his nerves. Anton's mind wanders.

_Kiel, _he recalls suddenly. _His name was Kiel._

* * *

Aki sits, swaying and humming, feeling the plugsuit shift around her like a fruit peel loose around the pulp. There is slowness to her movements as she swims through the charged LCL. Everything just slows to a crawl, the world passes her by. _It is as things should be_, she muses. Distantly, her ego crawls into the bolthole deep inside.

She realizes she's singing the old rhyme. Hazy memories of the implantation session warm her. Ophelia was alive then. They used to eat lunch together. Ophelia smiled a lot, a big gap where her front teeth should have been. Aki misses Ophelia. She misses Mother too. The faces squawking at her from the screens finally shut up.

Peace.

-**OBEY**-

She twitches.

Aki lets herself float for a time, it helps her calm. The slight currents from filters caress her cheek. Aki wonders why that is comforting. Something to ponder when she's inside. Maybe. Ah, the inside…

The com chirps, "Okay, jazz the waters."

Aki grunts, eyes fluttering open to watch the LCL begin to shimmer and shift in patterns off a ships hull at dock.

"Pre…tty…" Aki says, thinking of her home by the shore, the bodies floating in the canal, the struggling limb.

"She talks?" Always the same.

"Shut it, she speaks when she's high."

_They argue about me…they need to die. Just like the rest of us…die and give me my sweets. I want it all. _

Vacuum-sealed fingers grip the butterfly toggle; breathing grows heavier forcing LCL in and out. Calm vanishes quickly, bubbles rushing out her mouth with every breath. Her body thrusts back against the chair, a hiss turning to a yelp, the needles pricking her back. She writhes around, hair fanning out in a charcoal halo.

"Why am I left behi-i-ind…" The scintillation hurries speaking to Aki's mind, stimulating dormant thoughts. 'Wake up,' it whispers, subliminal coaxing out the darker impulses. Aki crawls into the safer reaches of the Ego, sheltering in the Room.

-**OBEY**-

_Let it burn. _She giggles between the stanzas, bracing. A knock on the door, behind which lies nothing.

"Snap shot, pressure is holding at forty-five percent."

_Aki. _Another knock.

"Mom-ma."

Scratchy sounds, the speakers crying. "Heart rate is increasing." Sounds like Lieutenant Vandergraff. He's nice. He doesn't shout.

"Good, good, give me a countdown."

_Aki, baby, open the door. _

Aki curls into a ball, face staring out at the stony faces in the Box. They mosaic and blob as Aki withdraws further into herself. The Room is inviting.

"Three…"

Aki licks her lips again, panting suddenly. The taste of blood. The red sea never tasted like blood.

"Two…"

A click behind, dozens of needles set and prime, their CO2 cartridges ready, each carrying an element of the Mix cocktail that would make Aki the dream of the NERV organization thus far. She didn't care. Not one goddamn bit.

"One."

A short, howling cry bursts from Aki's lungs, her back studded with dozens of injectors. Bowing forward, long ribbons of drool and blood flow from her mouth, bending back in the filter current like ugly streamers. Eyes rolling back, Aki slumps over when the oscillation increases tempo, a strobe giving vivid freeze frames of suffering. Little hands dart out and grab the butterfly controls, body shivering and seizing.

Aki watches from deep inside the Room, almost passive, sitting on a ratty bed there. They wish her harm. They wish her _harm_. She craves the fire running through her veins burning them, leaving them ashen iron husks.

Another knock on the door. _There's someone who'd like to speak with you…please…_

The sound of bodies ramming against the door jars Aki into the corner.

_Let us _in_, you little bitch! You'll fucking pay for this one!_

_Out little doll! OUT OUT OUT! Look at you, you stained freak. Waiting for Mommy to come kiss it and make it better. We're gonna change that, right now…_

The door bows in, seemingly made of rubber than wood. The sound of breathing, gasping, just beyond the door. Something rakes against the wood. Aki claps her hands to her ears. Rocking back and forth, she will not listen. She sings softly to herself.

_We wait in here. We're the weight you feel. A tumor that nothing can see, nothing can stop. We'll get in…soon. And then…then…we get to see how hollow you really are. _

"Home. Home. Home. Home. Home." She chants in her little room. In her mind.

* * *

"Christ, she's talking to herself again…"

"Ignore her, Lieutenant. I want readings." Yushida watches his screens slaved to each console. His eyebrows arch at the numbers coming in, fluctuating as they are.

"34.5 theoretical." Lieutenant Chambers lets out a small whistle. "That's…that's the highest yet, sir."

"Yes. Good, good…the docs will be up in a bit. They'll bring her down. Holy God…" Yushida's gaze settles on Aki's neck, watching slowly as black corruption crawls up her skin. "So it is does stain…" he murmurs.

"Sir?" The entire Pribnow Box is silent, everyone watching as the pilot's carotid artery turns ashen against the skin.

"Nothing, keep monitoring." He watches the tangled bird's nest of discolored veins grow, reaching like fanned out fingerss across her cheeks, stopping just shy of her nose and mouth and eyes. _That's mighty intriguing. She'll be a hit in fashion._ Anton barely suppresses his laughter, nodding to Vandergraff. "Patch mother in; let's get some reins on the beast."

"Aki." Mother says.

Aki's conscious mind leaps out of the bolthole into the ravages of her Mix-addled brain. She gasps at the pain and muscle torsion. Red-eyed and holding back tears, it becomes secondary to Mother.

-**HATE**-

"Mom-ma…I-I _hurt._" She mewls, looking up at the [Audio Only] frame before her on the holograph.

Mother coos, "I know, honey. But you must do well. Sing, Aki, it'll stop the pain."

Her legs cramp, calves coiling together and wrung out like towels. She screams and reaches down to wring the pain out. Her face hurts. Why? In the observation room, a dose of sedative slips into the Mix. Tweaking out, she stares at the blank viewscreen, imagining the heavenly face beyond it. Aki smiles, blood and bile flowing out of her mouth, away, away into the filters. Men speak somewhere around her. She ignores them.

"Wanna see you, Momma…"

"Not now, baby."

Aki growls, her hands jerking at the controls.

-**CALM**-

She sings. Mother coos and heaps praise upon her. Aki is a good girl, such a sweet girl, such an obedient girl.

The mien of the Plug changes into a barren cityscape. Something in her mind tries to think of red water. Why? Before her stands a tall man made of light with a silly halo-**KILL**-looping round big black eyes.

-**ADAM**-

Her left eye begins to twitch out of control. Her vision blurs.

"…bleeding…"

Aki coils up on the chair, hunched over, the injection tubes forming rows of plastic spines fueling a sudden frothing rage building up in her chest. An empty spot there begins to fill. Bloody froth and spittle fly out of her mouth. There, something long dormant begins to wake, pumped up a thousand times by the psychotropic.

"—on't need a fucking graph—look at her eyes! So much blood. Ge—"

-**KILL**-

Mother whispers in her ear, "Do well and you will have no need of ancestors."

-**KILL**-

The world turns into a narrow tunnel ringed in red. Something must die.

"—medical—"

The world goes black with a roar of utter rage.

* * *

2015

The Crèche, NERV Second Branch

Four long years. And in the end, was it worth it?

See the results for yourself.

Anton Yushida looks like grim death. The past four years have not been kind. The near bankruptcy of the Project, the deaths of all but one candidate, the investigations, the parleys with the UN Assembly, the lying, Doctor Tennyson's death, the document leak on the Net, so on. Anton runs a hand through his now thinning hair, tracing the hairline before fitting his cap on. He'd been the picture of nervous youth once.

He is watching the tremor in his hand come up full force. Anton knows that with the ending of the prototype phase, this final product, his life is forfeit. Too many accidents, far too many bodies (and he knew where they were all buried), too much, too many people knew what they were doing in old Building 32. The Old Men are pleased with the results.

Not with him.

He looks at the waiting sedan and the men staring straight at him.

Caught in a snare, they seem to say in body language alone. Anton knows a little about Section Two. And that kernel of information terrifies him. Project-M, at least this phase and facility, is being shut down. Success is all that matters, thank you, carry on. His staff gone, transferred, Yushida found all the time in the world to mull his fate. All that is left is Goodwin. He knew too much as well. And he failed just as much as his commander. The doctor is stoic. Anton envies that sort of will. A take anything that comes will. It does wonders right now.

Yushida looks to the product being wheeled out down the service ramp. No lights, no ominous rows of troops, just a hop and walk out of the infirmary for the Sixth Children. She even looks lucid. Small miracles do happen. That pleases him greatly. He feared that she'd be in one of her more withdrawn states. Her bloodshot eyes look skyward.

"Hmph, I guess we haven't let her out enough." Goodwin mutters.

Anton can't help but laugh. The orderly throws them a sharp look. Anton cares not. He's a dead man; the orderly gets transferred to Europe. And the Children, well, he didn't envy the upcoming tasks for her. She fidgets in the wheelchair, standing on shaky legs with some coaxing from the nurse. The Section Two men immediately usher her to the car, taking a final look at Anton. The girl looks confused, but makes no sound. She hasn't spoken in three years. Not since the incident with her mother and Tennyson. Tennyson's files are handed to the spooks.

"It's free now. The beast is free." Goodwin shakes his head, sighing heavily.

"I imagine this means our end now?" Anton grins, looking at his old friend. Holding out his hand, Goodwin clasps it firmly. "No regrets."

"None." Goodwin says. Two shadows creep up along with theirs.

"Gentlemen, if you'd come with us please." Anton turns to look the agent in the eye. Reflective sunglasses show only Anton's own worried, aged face, nothing else. He chuckles and nods, walking along with Goodwin, walking off grounds into the desert, out toward the fence almost four miles out, into the hills. Anton looks over his shoulder to see the sedan pull away.

Nothing happens for some minutes.

"We've done terrible things," Goodwin says. The agents remain silent.

"It's alright, Jim. No one will know. That's all that matters." Anton almost sounds sure of himself.

They walk. After climbing a steep hardpan dune, they find a small trench. Anton notes the bucket of lime sitting next to the trench and the shovels present. A laugh bubbles out of his lips unwarranted. He imagines if he moved just so, he could scoop up a shovel and plant the point through the throat of one of their captors, giving Jim enough time to grab his other and finish the other agent. They could flee.

But that's a pipedream. They're already on their knees and the agents have their guns out. Wind throws a harsh grit in their face. Anton can hardly see, eyes watery from the grit.

The agents calmly put two rounds into Jim.

His forehead explodes, blood pumping, gushing, gray chunks falling from the wound as he tumbled in lifelessly. A fine sheet of blood covers the doctor's frozen, shocked face.

Anton closes his eyes and whirls around in sudden, powerful fear.

"Please!" he says. He tries to knock the guns away. The guns cough a reply. Bullets shear off the tips of his fingers and smash into his right cheek exiting just below his chin. Blood rapidly fills his mouth, pouring out in long arcs of scarlet when he falls into the pit.

Choking, with the sight leaving his right eye, Anton looks up at a flatter world. One of the Section Two agents looks down, taking careful aim. He's young, bald, and completely unfazed by his work. Anton tried to cry. All he can do is bleed. _That's all that's left in the world_, he thinks, _murderers like me_.

That thought and the bullet are the last things to enter his mind.

* * *

2015

Runway Two, NERV Second Branch

Aki's catatonic. This is her semblance of normality. Her thin fingers idly play with frayed hair. Her eyes are locked on the outside world speeding by.

The agents pay her no mind: is she breathing? Yes? Good. A medical manila folder four inches thick sits in the lap of the agent riding shotgun. He thumbs through it and feels ill. "This…is fucked up. Kinda wish I had been on the other team now…"

"I don't need to read anything. _Look_ at the kid."

Their winding conversation about right and wrong in the world is ignored. Aki feels a dozen new sensations. The soft leather of the seat barely helps the constant soreness in her back, pain lances up her spine. Fingers dance across the rough texture regardless. The soft breeze and slightly off-smelling air from the vents cools her like nothing else. Not the bone-chilling winds of the test chambers, no. This is something alien: comfort. She sucks on her sunken cheeks, idly chews them.

Of course, she's inside, deep in the bolthole and sitting in the Room.

See Aki in the Room: huddled up there in the corner and covered in ashy dust, staring at the door. A thin linen shirt is all that covers her shivering frame. A tattered throw haphazardly tucked round her shoulders. Matted locks of hair cling to sweat-slick cheeks. Her skin yellow and waxy in the dying light of dusk. The others prowl around just outside the door, begging for peek inside. Just friendly neighbors, oh yes.

_Let us in! Please! They comin'! Aki, please!_ Nails rake over the thick wood and it shudders as if a dozen men with a battering ram test it. _Please, you four-eyed fuck, we can't hide out here!_

The voices murmur amongst themselves, conspirators in the umber twilight just outside the door. Aki's looking around the Room in haste. Everything's so cold. Her fingers dig up furrows of powdery dust, revealing the old wood beneath.

_Better clean your room._

Aki snorts, wiping the filth off on her leg in great greasy smears, constantly eyeing the door. She tugs the throw over her head, trying to become one with the shadows. _Just go_, she slams her eyes shut.

The ramming starts again with a chorus of curses and rage.

_Nothing more than a fucking freak! Look at you! LOOK AT YOU! I'm gonna cut that stupid smirk off your face! Mock me! Do it a-fuckin'-gain! DO IT! OPEN UP!_

_DIE DIE DIE DIE, JUST CLOSE THOSE EYES AND DIE!_

Aki throws herself into the corner, trying to flee, hands scrabbling at the floorboards, scraping and her mouth open in a silent scream. Long, nasty splinters lance new homes underneath her nails, sending little threads of blood into the dust. She tears her hands apart, trying to dig a hole to crawl into. The dust and the blood mix into a thick slurry that smells like the infirmary.

_Come out and play, Aki! Come on! I wanna play sheets again! You like sheets! _

Something moves in the corner of the room, just where the shadows thicken near the door. Aki's hands are red ruins, bleeding, splintered and nails dangling at odd angles. The pain throws her mind in a loop. A painful whimper wells up in her throat, _leave, leave, leave, leave_ goes the chant. _Make it stop, I just wanna stay inside. Why me? Blow it up, watch it fall flat…_

All the sounds cease. Aki slowly looks back at the door, holding her ruined hands close to her belly. Streaks of red dye adorn her medical gown. The Room is warped and twisted. All is elongated, as if viewed through a door's peephole. The door is a short, bent thing. Still Aki cowers in her corner.

The door shimmers with a darkness growing in the shadows round it, the weak twilight from the window unable to break the spell of the dark.

_Why you?_ It says. _Because you're here._

It laughs and slips away, the shadows taking on their normal shades and peeling away at the soft orange light from the boarded windows. The murmur outside the door dies away.

Aki rocks back to reality, her head whipping right to left. Slowly, she recalls coming into the car.

The men are silent. She likes this. They don't ask pointless questions. She's confused though, why do they wear black? And why do they cover their eyes? It's been so long since she's seen anything other than white or khaki. The sky, tinted violet by the windows, is so strange. It goes forever. There are no ceilings, no cells, no walls. The sky holds no memories, much like the ocean she lived near once. That calms her.

The agents speak, not bothering to whisper. "I think she has palsy or something, her hands are shaking."

"Not our problem."

Aki couldn't stop making them shake unless she took her doses. It's been a few hours. She hardly cares. As long as she gets _something_, it keeps her inside and everything outside trying to get in fades away. And nothing pleases her more. Aki feels her stomach start to knot, right above her bellybutton. Her fingers dig into her thighs, hefting them like grabhandles on a toolbox. The sky is blurring by, too fast, too fast! The world passes her by; all she can do is hold on for dear life.

Something lurches and twists.

_Because you're here._

It feels as if a coil of ten thousand eels writhe around inside. Each gnaws and rips at the intestinal walls. The car heads toward a giant winged plane waiting on the tarmac, the wings winking in the sunlight. Aki holds her stomach tight. She doesn't want to be in the sky. The fly in the spider's web, struggling to break away is never successful. She'd not get out of this one.

Her eyes are frantic, looking at each man in the car. They'll beat her, she knows it. She deserves it. The car is nice, it smells good. It doesn't smell antiseptic like the rest of her life does. She'll ruin it.

Aki doubles over.

"What the hell is wrong with her?" someone says.

Aki shows them a moment later, covering the back seat with a breakfast force-fed earlier.

* * *

2015

Tokyo-03, NERV Headquarters

Misato Katsuragi sighs, seeing the reams of paperwork and tries to will it away.

Pointless things, technical readouts from synch-time graphs concerning the First Children, (not so pointless) accident reports concerning the Unit Zero start up tests a week ago, filling out paperwork for now cancelled exercises meant to take place within the Geo-Front, damage estimates from the now shattered testing chamber and command box. It goes on and on.

_I…need a smoke._ Misato sneers at the thought, but it's so appropriate. Even a beer wouldn't cure her boredom right now. Drastic measures are needed. Ritsuko's got plenty cigarettes, she won't miss a few.

"The perfect crime." She says. Won't happen though, she realizes she's just being shitty about paperwork.

Thinking more about it turns her stomach.

As much as she wants one, it makes her sick. It wasn't enough that Ritsuko smokes, even thinking back to how she and Kaji used to smoke back in school. Dad smoked. Memory stirs. _Look at me, Misato. They're horrid for you, look at this face and hear this cough. This'll be yours if you keep it up, see how the boys love you then. _He even laughed afterward.

_Only damn joke he ever made._ She sighs. Misato's fingers fumble with the cross round her neck, staring through the paperwork spread out on the desk. A gooseneck lamp casts the only light. She wanted a cozier atmosphere. Now it feels decidedly grim. She shakes her head, flipping on the overheads and blinking away the dancing spots.

"To hell with this. Break time!" She says, standing up and stretching. "Food, food, food."

Gathering up a few pages she's not read, she heads for the mess hall. Even as she walks toward the elevators, her eyes scan the pages clasped tightly in clipboard. Yet, she dwells on that crappy old joke and her final days in Antarctica so many years ago.

_It screamed,_ the Captain thinks, shivering. The doors slide shut.

* * *

Mess Hall No. 4, NERV Headquarters

_Well…dull as Masamune's on a Wednesday…_ Misato sighs, looking around the mess hall. She figured _someone_ would be on break. _Hell,_ she thinks, _Fuyutski'd be great company right now_. With a flick of her wrist, the clipboard clatters to a nearby table.

_So much for curing boredom. Eh, might as well eat._

She follows the rote: grabbing hot food from the autoloader, filling up on the last of the coffee, grabbing the choice foods from the ala carte. At least it's fresh today. Old man Ichi stands behind the line, reading the paper. A smile breaks on his dour old face when he sees Misato.

"Nuttin' for it today, Captain. Been quiet since breakfast, even let my own take breaks at lunch."

"Aw, I'm sorry. I'll be in here to keep you all company, how's that?"

"Mighty fine, Cap'n. Oh! Nevermind, we got another live one!" Ichi pivots on his heel, looking back into the kitchen. "Ichigo! Get off your ass and start whipping up some fresh coffee! Keko! Spiced noodles with the mild miso! Chop-chop, people!" The kitchen is alive with swearing and falling pots.

Misato turns around, laughing, knowing only one person who ate that shit for lunch. She took one look at the head of Project-E's haggard walk and couldn't stop the words from spilling out.

"Good God, Rits, you look like shit."

The doctor snorts, "Wow, thanks. Ass." Misato beams. "But I do feel like shit, so I can't be completely irate. Spent the night doing maintenance on the MAGI, haven't slept in thirty-seven hours." Ritsuko blinks, rubbing at baggy eyes "God, it has been thirty-seven. Ugh. Even Maya cried off after thirteen hours, half the crew left before that." Akagi pulls out the ubiquitous pill bottle she carries round everywhere, jingling it. Ah, relief inside! She pops the top.

"How is Rei? I've got the medical report, I just haven't read it. 'Sover there with the others."

Ritsuko shrugs, shaking a few white capsules into her palm. "She'll live. Arm'll heal in time; we think her eye is okay." Ritsuko gulps the pills down. "It'll take a bit more testing to know. Her internal injuries are the most worrisome bit right now. Only one surgery needed, which is good. The staff is still worried about internal bleeding."

"Ma'am," Ichi interjects, leaning over the ala carte line with a steaming cup of coffee. "One fresh, black, two sugars." Misato glances down at her own coffee. Sludge in a cup. _Bleh._

"You're a lifesaver." Ritsuko sips, savoring the rich taste. "Oh God, yes. We're gonna go plant ourselves over there, let me know when the noodles are done."

"Yes, ma'am! Shijumi'll bring 'em out."

Misato stays silent as they sit down, mulling Rei's condition. She never speaks much with the First. That is Ritsuko and the Commander's job. The girl is too quiet for Misato. Her pale skin and blued hair never bothered Misato in the least unlike a lot of the crew. It's the red eyes that bug her. Red eyes aren't natural, albino or not. Misato snaps back, realizing she's staring off into space and acutely aware of Ritsuko's curious look.

"Sorry, j-just…off in my own world. Um, is Rei going to be okay in the long run?"

"Oh yes, she'll be fine. That's what I think, anyhow. She can take it." Ritsuko says, downing more aspirin.

"I suppose she is. Lots of kids are like that now."

Akagi nods, smiling tightly. "How things are and all. And, uh, I think we're going to be getting a new perspective on kids like that soon…"

Misato looks up from her paperwork, "What do you mean?"

"Maya didn't inform you?"

A slow headshake to the negative.

"Hoo boy. We got word yesterday from the Second Branch. They're sending us the Sixth Children."

"What?" Misato says, swallowing a mouthful of salad. "There's a _Sixth?_ Where the hell are three through five? The candidates we have at the school…? And…_huh_?"

Ritsuko smiles. "I have no idea. We've not even gotten this girl's file yet. Only the primer from Marduk. She's part of a new program the Second Branch has been playing with for years."

"So, is she like the Second Children in Germany? Motormouth?" Misato vaguely recalls her time with the Second in Germany. Talkative, lively, and a far cry from Rei's stoic self.

"Um, no, not exactly. She's a mute, from what we know." The head of Project-E smiles at Misato's dumbfounded look. "We get all the great ones, don't we?" Ritsuko shuts up. The smell of spices and miso fill Misato's nostrils. Shijumi sets down Ritsuko's usual. "Thank you so much."

He leaves. "Anyway. She'll be here in about a week, maybe two."

"We have only two Units here. We'd have to refit the Prototype for her." Images of the colossi sleeping in the depths of NERV flash through Misato's mind. "Are…" She doesn't know how to ask it. Her tongue feels thick and clumsy. For a moment, all Misato can hear is that wailing cry from Second Impact through the fog of years. "Are _they_ back?"

Ritsuko shakes her head, "Not yet." Silence. They eat for a time; fiddle with paperwork, lost in their thoughts. Misato's mind goes in a dozen directions all at once.

"It's modular." Ritsuko says.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"The Sixth is part of an experimental program for new Pilots. She…can be placed in any Evangelion Unit, along with her M-Type Entry Plug. It's a universal system, newest technology they've brewed up in American R&D. The UN seems rather pleased with it."

"Huh, never heard of it. So, what's the new girl like besides being a mute?"

Ritsuko chuckles, "Not exactly mute. I don't know the exact circumstances, but she refuses to talk at all. Her information packet will be here soon enough. We'll see then. Pointless speculation is best left for me and the Committee. By the way, we've got a meeting coming up in two days. Your people, my people, bridge crew, hell, even the technical groups."

Misato groans, "God, not another one. We've probably got an inspection coming up then. The UN wants to see how its shiny toys are doing rotting 'way down there' in 'this damn dome.'" She rolls her eyes and looks back at her clipboard, flipping a few pages. She pauses.

"What's wrong?"

"Well, I guess Maya _did_ let me know." Spinning the clipboard, Misato pushes it forward. A simple memo attached to a photo and primer.

"Yep, that's her. Born May 2001. Sparse, isn't it? Hmm, missed the prone to nightmares bit." Ritsuko studies the picture. "Look at her eyes. Rei has competition in the blank stare category."

Misato looks. This Aki Yamato stares out at nothing. Her eyes are cold and the color of moss. There is no spark of life. Not even apathy. Nothing. Misato shivers; reminded of the days she spent after the Second Impact. Simply sitting, staring, and never speaking. When she looked in the mirror for the first time after being picked up, all she could see was a ghost.

The girl in the photo is a ghost. Neither here nor there.

"Goddamn. And what exactly did they do at this training program at Second?"

"Not a clue." Ritsuko says.

"…Kay. Um, who's picking her up from the airbase near Tokyo-02 in two weeks?"

"Congratulations, Captain. This one is yours." Misato groans at Ritsuko's sickly sweet smile.

* * *

A/N: Woo! Back on the wagon. This has been a rather fun little exercise, cranking out a chapter for the first time in…well, forever. Years. Long one too, isn't it? Good times, I'll be cracking the next chapter soon enough. I know this is old ground with me. I enjoyed Shimmer and re-inventing things is popular now, so why not? That and I never completed the story.

Going back to see it now, I found a lot I wish to cut out, a lot I want to keep and expand on. I have all the time in the world. So now I write again. Please, enjoy. There'll be other 'original' fics along as well, worry not.

Cheers.


	2. CII

**Disclaimer:** This is a work of fan fiction. The author does not own anything concerning Gainax's IP Neon Genesis Evangelion. The company gives the word, and this comes down.

_**Acceptable Losses**_

**C-II**

2015

Edwards Air Force Base, California, USA

Aki witnesses the first light of dawn breach the horizon. Centuries past or seconds before the Room existed, she remembers the dawn and its entreaties. Beginnings are fickle things remembered only as dreams and dismissed just as quickly. But seeing it now, she recalls a hazy dream…

_Watch it from the window overlooking the apple trees. Watch it just as the sky turns amber, try not to cry out how pretty it is (Mother and Father sleep in the next room, you know). _

_Watch it. Watch it, lest you forget. Don't think to the contrary._

She sits on the edge of Runway Six, heels digging trenches in the hard clay of the dry lake bed. The new shoes hurt her feet, but it's nothing. They're _new _shoes_._ Vaguely, Aki doesn't care about ruining them. Nor the new clothes too, covered in streaks of grit from sitting here on filthy ground. No one on the base cares for the clothes. People prefer staring at the blackened veins crisscrossing her arms and the fittings lining her neck, not the rest of her.

They want to see the freaky sideshow attractions.

Or they stare at the Shadows. Aki thinks the sobriquet fits; all four men dress in black and follow her everywhere. Occasionally, they hold their ears and commune with the air from time to time. Funny creatures. Like the wraiths that stalked the halls of the Sub-Basement in the Crèche.

And people call Aki strange.

Their cold faces and curt speech refresh her. They follow without question. Aki doesn't even ask, they simply _move._ They never yell or raise their voices, not with her. But the gawkers in the oddly colored uniforms part like a split skull when they walk the UN Barracks halls.

People don't stare at the veins or the fittings when Shadows are near.

It makes her happy, those shocked looks. Seeing shocked faces takes her back. It brings to mind the scent of alcohol and doesn't remind her of sickness or decay. Her fingers go numb. It reminds her—

—Tennyson gasping for breath, body writhing like a gutted fish on the linoleum—

—gushing out of ripped trachea, vibrant, lovely, going so well with that ridiculous Hermes scarf she—

—the guards' horrified faces—

—thumb prying out that mocking grey eyeball—

—screams from the stricken—

—pressure building in her temples—

Memories are perfect crystals to be cherished for their unique properties. Isn't that right, doctor? Doctor? Oh, I'm sorry.

"Hee…"

She stares ahead.

The sky lightens. Venus burns brightly in the pre-dawn light. It intensifies, reminding her of the halogens they lit at awakening. The air coming off the lake bed is cool, refreshing, with the strangest hint of cloves. Too many years behind screens and sitting in sterile rooms diluted memory of the sky, the stars, the soil and the wind.

Each time the wind comes calling, Aki closes her eyes. And smells the clean air and how painfully cool it is on her cheeks. Brittle fingers of recycled stale air were all the Crèche offered. The only shift in paradigm is when the obliged to turn on the heaters.

Cold fingertips drum over her lips.

White skin turns hilly with gooseflesh, her legs pebbling as shades of orange begin to creep across the flatlands.

_Because you're here._

She thinks of the lotus Doctor Goodwin kept in his office under the window. She squints as the burgeoning tip of the sun pierces the horizon, suddenly rimming the whole earth in a band of red hot iron. The first true warmth hit her; it's a slow heat. A good heat.

She closes her eyes. Light shines into the Room.

Aki smiles and loosens the massive overcoat from around her bony shoulders. A requisition from a Shadow, he gave it without thought. Not disingenuous in any way. Bizarre man. There're always sneers and shouts. He doesn't seem to be a piece of shit. Not a Yushida-man.

Yushida. Bootlicker King.

"Heh, hehe…hmph-hahaha…" Aki flares and settles in the span of six seconds.

The laughing fit fades.

A great hand of light spreads out across the lake bed, touching the whole world, touching the God of the apple and fig leaf. Who is in His Heaven. Aki spits at the thought, unable to stop it. She misses the look her Shadows give one another, the shakes of the head.

Seeing the sun sphere again pleases her and reminds her of the mindless violence.

The day she left home by the canal. The hand scrabbles to grab a rock in the garden. The scent of smoking meat fills the house for hours. The sounds of sickness from the bathroom.

Aki sits perfectly still watching the sun. The fire replays. It starts on pause.

She remembers the broken vase in the hall and the sad spilled lilies blackening in the intense heat.

The shoji lining the hall were aflame, fire spreading, licking, feeding on the hardwood floor, the fuliginous stains growing where ash landed. The shoji blistered like flesh before the flames ate them whole. Light trampled through the disintegrating rice paper. The sudden bright white light blinds her like the doctor checking the pupils and reminds her of innocuous questions. Nothings.

She ducked low and crawled along the wall, swatting at burning embers singing her hair, avoiding inquiring tongues of stranger-flames. Someone was screaming for her. Where?

_OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT! Fuckin' freak!_

Then she saw it.

Beyond a fire-claimed door there is a waxen face melting on the floor, ropey hair smoldering, and curdled white streaming down tallow cheeks like runny eggs. They had been watery celadon eyes once. A single hand was all that remained untouched, outside the threshold of the fire, with broken fingernails. Blue flames began to lick at it, singed the hairs, turning the skin scarlet.

The memory plays at speed now. Flashes and smells and tastes.

The house and its apple trees sent great plumes of smoke high into the sky. No one came to put it out. She remembers that.

Aki rests her face against dirty knees and grows very still. The sun's warmth does not reach her. She mouths a short prayer. "…In His Heaven." Her laugh is empty and soft as a loved one's lies.

_No God, Momma. No God._

Still, a surge of heat burns behind the eyes. The pressure bottles up, wanting an outlet. Anything, be it tears or shouting or sullen guilt. All of them are preferred. Sheer force of will refuses its utterance.

The gear shifts to neutral and conscious thought slips through the bolthole. The Room is quiet. The same twilit shadows cover the sparse setting. Broken mirrors lean against the far wall, covered in dunes of dust and webbing. Canvas covers a pile of moldy boxes. A thousand distorted reflections of stare back wide-eyed and surprised. Aki crawls back against the wall very slowly.

Something growls.

Each reflection smiles.

Her throat clicks dry. Aki ignores the looks of longing. She suddenly recalls Orderly Jacobs. He is forgotten swiftly.

_They_ will not hear her cry. It's all they want. All that drives them. Not to console her or give comfort. The mimes strive to reach, and consume, and violate her. One of them whispers enticements of such depravity Aki nearly recalls what shame is. The mirrors ebb and stretch, reaching out for her.

_Don't _touch_ me._

Aki sinks deeper and lets the world burn.

* * *

Outside, in the waking world, she feels the Shadow come to collect her. His footsteps quietly clap on the hard concrete, now drowned out by the roar of jet engines high in the cirrus.

"C'mon mousy, plane to catch," says he, carefully kneeling down beside her. He is studiously polite, like the others. Ng-man. The largest Shadow, he towers a foot-and-a-half over her. Arms as thick as tree trunks slowly reach out to offer a meaty hand. The hairy wrists peeking out of the sleeve make her smile. There is a fluid undertone to his voice. He can speak French. She doesn't understand him then.

His movements are measured, trying to not move too fast. No repeat motion sickness. They all move slowly around her now. She likes that, shows adaptation. And willing adjustment to her needs.

They don't stare or start at the fittings that run down her neck and vanish below the collar of her shirt. They are…something she can't remember.

The foreign sensations and pleasantries are long gone.

* * *

Inside, the reflections stop smiling, hiding their mouths full of needle-sharp teeth. Dozens of glinting eyes look on sullenly. Their naked bodies covered in injection stubs, distended veins projecting in vulgar road maps across their chalk white bodies.

A knock at the door.

_C'MON LET US IN! GODDAMMIT LET US IN! LET! US! IN!_

Aki shies away, burrowing under her covers, dragging the pillows around in loose fortification against the oily shadow seeping in from under the door. Bloodshot eyes fly open in beholding her tormentors.

A quieter voice speaks from the depths of the oil slick.

_Hello there. _

Another from beyond the door, strained, the edge of control.

_Can you see these fingers? Do you _see_ this knife? Look at it. I swear to God, you take your eyes off, I'll cut something off. What do you _see_? _

_Don't…don't be _scared, _Aki!_ _Ha._

Hands cover ears. _There is nothing wrong_, she thinks. _There is a dawn sky before me_. _I am outside. The wind feels good. _

The petro-slick chuckles darkly. Great bubbles of glistening ephemera rise up and pop. Humanoid shapes dance in the mirrors, wall-eyed and grabbing for Aki.

Hands hammer on the door. They've come again. Aki digs her fingers into the soft skin and matted hair round her ears, trying to tear them off. It'll make all the sounds go away. Sweet peace will be hers. A wild feverish thought plucks out of the ether: I must hear Mother again.

_Momma?_

_Yes, Aki baby?_

…_Why'd you die?_

_I don't know why. It was easy._

She looks across the Room at her myriad reflections teeming in webs of splintered glass. The gears turn inside, ticking down to the answer.

They are the precipice. Any and all of them are what she can be in moments. Without the Room, they'll flood into her, change her. Turn her back to what she was. All those rotting parts will eat her soul. The good doctor told her about that. The Mix lets them out so she doesn't go mad. They break free. Free. Like Athena from Zeus' head. Oh yes. It doesn't hurt so much then.

-**OBEY**-

They claw at their prisons, begging for succor. 'Just a minute of freedom. Let us roam. Please.'

…

_I know how to shut you up._

Aki's smile turns feral.

The reflections reel back, mouthing 'no, please.'

Aki pivots her hips, facing the mirrors, locks her shoulders and rockets back against the shoddy cement walls. Her head crumples into her chest. Red and black novae bloom in her eyes. Copper and loose teeth fill the emptiness. Pain so transcendent she can feel it in her toes.

A stream of blood and a sliver of tongue tumble out, abandoning ship. The homunculi scream and snigger from putrid lips, hammering at their silvered prisons. Aki replies in kind. They'll leave or her head cracks like an egg and out comes the yolk and thick whites dyed red. Either way, it's release.

The voyeurs watch from under their inverted blankets, from under the beds, or filling their mirrors with lurid reflections of her own face. Aki feels sick. It's all her.

No more.

_Thock-_blood streams down the wall, painting the dust in reds and whites and black. Crimson waterfalls runs down her back. Hair clumps and ropes around the new wounds. She can't see. Nausea loosens her bowels.

A mime straight ahead licks at the polished surface, whimpering.

_**THOCK**__-_A collective sigh of pleasure emanates from the mimes. Some howl in pleasure, working hands and fingers between necrotic thighs, chuckling in slobbery voices. Others beat their chests. Others weep.

_HA. Don't be _scared! Aki thinks, overflowing with slurring giggles at the sounds of weeping from _them._

_Thock-_little clumps of hair tear away, sticking on the wall, her little banners, the only craft she knows.

-**KILL**-

_Thock-_blood occludes her eyes, mingling with her tears, pink rivulets run down sunken cheeks, tracing every weary line and the single pocked scar on her chin-

_Hate you all._

_Thock-_the wraiths watch, lusting. Wanting freedom. Aki's laughing, high and wild. Laughing with the mimes. She drunkenly falls forward. They start screaming as one. Clutching great handfuls of sheet, she hurtles back until the-

_THOCK_- egg breaks. A lifeless lump slumps to the bed.

Silence falls.

The mimes sit on their tattered beds and ogle the bloody mess with abiding hunger. The shadows no longer laugh; the maleficent specters outside the door recede with the tides. Every mirrored eye traces the thin waterfall of crimson spilling on the floor. Such lovely caramel sheets dripping down.

Hungry tongues wait to lap it up.

The body twitches. The head bursts, a rotten bruised apple oozing out rusted gray pulp.

There is an ending, the unpleasant one.

* * *

And there is nothing wrong.

The sunlight hurts her eyes.

Aki licks her lips, ignoring the sudden flush in her cheeks. And resonant pain floods through the byways of her brain. The small things twitching there, waiting there.

Maybe.

Still alive.

The numb girl takes Ng-man's rough hand. His smile is tight. He knows she won't smile back. He finds her hand clammy, the skin burning. He has her checked by the medics before takeoff. Thin fingers wrap around three of his and she tumultuously stands on shaky feet. Aki looks back at the rising sun.

"Pretty isn't it? Move it, shorty stuff, time for the flight. NERV waits."

It means nothing to her.

_Pass me around like a whiskey bottle to this new Yushida-man_.

And that's there is. The passing of the baton, here you go, off to someone new. Perhaps another time, someone will stick around.

Vacantly Aki walks to the sedan, where they will drive her to a waiting C-17. One of the many giant beasts nestled in cavernous hangars with the smaller, sleeker jets and bulky VTOLs.

The ride to the hangar goes quietly, only curt words between the Shadows. Japan waits, they said.

She's going home.

_There is nothing left. Melted statues. What big eyes you have._

Behind dull eyes, the animals test their cages.

* * *

2015

Outskirts of Tokyo-03, Fuji-Hakone Highway 03, old Route 138

**Two days later…**

Aki stares at the aluminum can in her hands.

The sloshing sound the liquid makes pleases her; tip it, the liquid weight shifts and hold steady. Tip it back, the juice flows back like a pulse. Felt, but not held. It gleams in the rapid-fire flashes of orange lights lining the route. Each moment in the spotlights, a little caricature appears on the can, the little blue mascot sighing in pleasure.

Grape Qoo is printed on the can. She only knows this because the driver said so. The kanji hurts Aki's eyes.

Weird name. Her fingers fiddle with the slim tab, producing a disjointed clicking. The sound is soothing. Rain on a tin roof.

The driver talks often. Aki ignores her, watching the world blur. Idle fingers flex, insistent. Every muscle trembles with unspent energy. Something burns in her gut, just above her navel. The auto-tab. She needs a tab. The bad word plays around in her head. The fucker is somewhere in the duffel bag. They tried to search for contraband, but even the Shadows missed the sleek injector.

Aki savors a secret smile. The extra modules she's palmed will keep her sated. Aki ignores the sweat breaking out on her cheeks. All in due time…that's all. The bad word burns into her retinas.

The driver speaks and laughs at empty things and tries to win her over with flagrant appeal.

It surely bewitches most, maybe if she were male. Maybe then this woman's cavalier style would matter. She's seen how this works. A man makes a crude remark, begs for a fuck with swagger, sweat, daily harassment, and a loud mouth. The woman takes it in stride with a feigned reserved nature. Then they fuck in one of the emptied cells, the sticky come staining the pillow of a dead child. Empty sounds of apes grunting, fucking.

Yes.

Love, hate, meaningless terms.

If only Aki cared.

She sees things about the 'captain': prettier than any of the female nurses or Tennyson, a prettier smile than Ophelia's slow one, hair black enough that it shifts violet in the light. It amuses Aki, and is the first thing she notices about her. So bizarre. Aki wonders who painted it. Maybe a battery of injections shifted the pigmentation? She'd certainly be like Ophelia then.

Would she die like Ophelia too? No, the captain knows people who want her to live.

Aki's smile is so quick and vanishes so fast that it can't have happened. Her fingers drum against parched lips. Tick, tick, tick goes the aluminum tab.

She misses the look the violet-haired woman gives her. The Sixth sees things about this 'captain' and wonders if it matters. Will she pass her off too? Take her drink, gain prestige for using Aki's presence, and off the child will go to the next asshole who wants her to dance like a marionette.

It doesn't matter. They'll give her Mix. She'll dance for that piece of release. It shows in every jerking movement. Desperation. The bad word.

Withdrawal.

The car speeds along lonely roads high in the mountains. Mile markers and signs blur by in reflectorized blue.

The moon sits on high, holding a staring contest with Aki. It refuses to let her win. There are no clouds to aid her.

A carpet of stars glitter in the sky, so rich and full that Aki can safely say she's never seen their like. Between those moments, Aki sees the distant hard lights of homes and towns on the mountain or sitting in massive clusters on the plains far below them. Fallen stars from the sky. Each desperately trying to signal home and ascend again.

Aki sees the flickers of moonlight in the farthest distance. The silver lines of light wink out one after the other on some great black _thing_. Beyond the land stars and the stink of humanity. There lies the sea. That long stretch of violet tinged light, the edge of the world.

The Red Memory, people call it.

Home, Aki calls it.

The bloody sea is peace. Peace of mind.

Her head rests against the cool window, the can forgotten, clutched by numb fingers. Is it all a waste of time thinking about the sea? Why not simply crawl inside and lie in the Room forever? Let the world well and truly pass her by. What is there to see? People went on without her already. The world grows again. The Mix lets her crawl inside, sleep, and the mimes come out to play.

Aki's reflection grimaces.

She misses her Shadows. They rarely spoke, they did not judge, and the kept all the staring folk away. Why couldn't she have ridden with them? They didn't look at her fittings. Not like this woman whose eyes seem glued to them.

_Professional._ _I know you, captain. Yes._

The Shadows follow in another sedan, not forty feet back. Their headlights cut through the dark, not fading from sight once. Still there, waiting, in the dark.

She turns her head slightly, and regards the driver.

Won't she shut _up_? Aki doesn't know what curry is, but the woman blathers on about it, smiling and glancing over every few seconds. The road would be more important to watch. Aki's fingers grip the arm rest. Aki sees the tightness in her eyes, hears the cracking in her voice. How hard she's riding the gas pedal. Uncomfortable being near a child.

How quaint.

_You're not a people person like the good doctor. Heh._

Aki hiccups, finally popping the tab of the drink. This pondering is thirsty business. Drinking and gulping down the sweet grape juice, Aki blithely ignores the woman's pleased grin. Her stomach barely revolts at the slightly fizzy confection. She likes the taste. She'll pass blood later.

* * *

2015

NERV Headquarters, The Gardens

"What do you know about her, Carter?" Misato glances over at the aloof Pilot. Aki Yamato stares up at the blue moonlight filtering down from the vast mirror array far overhead. She watches the way her fingers spread and try to feel the wind rushing by. All created by wind turbines placed on the perimeter of the dome working together via MAGI control.

One artificial world to another, the wool's pulled over her eyes again. Misato doesn't linger on the thought.

"Much as you do I'm afraid." The big man shrugs, pauses, and brings a finger up to his earpiece. Shakes his head and continues.

"Apologies. I've read the same files you have, seen the same things you have. She's…gone. In the head." He runs a hand over a buzzcut of salt-and-pepper. "Doesn't speak, stares a lot, gets this odd smile playing on her face every so often, and reams of classified back history. Gives you the willies just looking in her eyes… We're still trying to piece things together." He smiles apologetically. "I don't know what to tell you other than that."

Misato nods, pushing through a haze of memory, "That's enough, I suppose. She creeps me out, I won't lie. Aki makes Rei seem like a playful kitten, so far."

"We're all agreed that the Sixth leaves the First in the dust, captain. No contest." He starts when she begins laughing.

"I'm sorry. Long day and…that's just an amusing image. I've not had much sleep recently. You're doing good work. I mean it."

"We do our jobs, nothing else."

"Mmm, um, something else?"

The agent hesitates. "Have you noticed the…the nozzles? And the-the…I don't know what to call it. The corruption there on her back? She tried to change right then and there when we gave her new clothes. We got a view of her back before we ushered her off with a nurse. It's… Imagine a highway map. Black taint, every vein."

Misato swallows down something bitter and sighs. "Yes. Only saw the nozzles, I've not seen the aftereffects on her veins. Whatever they did to her in America won't fade—that's permanent."

"I've never seen people stare at another human being like the way a lot of personnel did at Edwards. And they didn't even see what we had seen."

Quiet. Soon, they part with a salute.

She watches Aki for a moment stretching to hours.

Watching slim fingers feel the air, eyes looking at the carved out hills and lakes and forests inside the 'Front. Letting her see and absorb the better legacies people can build. Though Misato can't help but think if that's just a pipe dream. Aki Yamato gives not one wit about the world around her. Dulled to sensation and wary of human interaction through psychological torture, there's a reason not to give a shit. Thousand yard stares and scars are all she needs to wander through crowds. No need for the struggle of companionship or the warmth of people, just the perfect silence inside her bubble.

Misato remembers college and all that catching up. The screaming debates with her professors. Kaji. Her mother's suicide. Meeting Ritsuko. Forming friendships petty or lasting, using said girlfriends as leaping off points for their betters. So many petty strings. Bull-rushing everything as if the silence would come crashing down again if she stopped.

It never did. One could argue that life was simply a game since the day she came out of it. Since Impact. All of it wasted playing catch up, trying to shutter out that constant screaming in the night.

_Two years silent. I was quiet for 731 days, fourteen hours, sixteen minutes, Aki. File says you've breezed by me by six months. What do you see in the mirror? Do you see anyone?_

Aki looks back at her. Something clenches up inside. Maybe not. Some things better learned one step at a time. She watches the Sixth sit down on a bench near a pentacle of fountains. Nothing moves her, not even a wide-eyed expression on the ride down via the car tram. None of it reaches the child. Only the cool breeze succeeds breaking through and only in the simplest way: tactile sensation.

Heavy feet carry her closer. Misato looks down every third step, unsure of the course.

"Guess they never let you out much, huh?" Misato whispers, approaching the bench. No reply.

Green eyes peer out their corners at Misato. Wheels turn. Thoughts drop down like an IV drip. They accrue in the filters and simply wash through her system. There are no words to represent them. Sorted and stored away in a great reservoir inside. Drip, drip. It's for everything inside.

_It's how I did it_.

There are only a few people who can recover from such things. It takes an act of will and so much time. Misato looks at the girl. Can she even do this? Laughing and carrying on in some college? Does she even have a formal education? Does she have family? There's nothing after this. And it's a taste the captain doesn't like. Misato stands with her palms placed flatwise on the bench, figuring out her next move.

She speaks.

"I come here sometimes to just look at it. We made it, you know. Dug it all out, built it all, this…well; this is your home now. You can take quarters here or in the city if you want. Anywhere you want. You can…" The words fail her. "You'll have all the support you need…" Aki stares on dully, eyes locked on the NERV badge dangling round her neck on punched eyelets.

_Dammit._

"Do you understand me at all?" Misato asks, trying to avoid a landmine.

Aki narrows her eyes, turning round to face her fully. The mine triggers. She stretches, popping her back. After a moment, miraculously, she nods. Defused.

"Heh, okay. I'm sorry. I-uh-just…" _Don't fuck this up, Misato. _"May I sit?" she said, after a moment.

The Sixth utters nothing, only hefts the bland olive drab duffel bag onto her slim thighs and wraps her arms around it. She makes no sign. You can almost measure the exact moment when the light finally went out in her eyes. At least she's breathing. The Sixth's face holds the rapturous lucidity of a fruit fly.

Misato stares at the child, her mind unconsciously overlapping the x-rays from the report. A puzzling disassociation, she imagines this is how Ritsuko feels daily. Detached, looking at everything from a view of how the universe works, not how it lives. The finest cynical mindset, yes sir.

She looks.

She sees a tangle of bright white viscera and all the little filaments of silver chloride lingering in her brain, in her spinal cord, weaving their own pathways deep inside. And the implants themselves, the fittings, connectors for the injection tubes. All of it went directly into her spine. Direct saturation of the brain with psychotropics. Misato looks down at her shaking hands.

"How…?"

There's no telling how it works in reality. So far beyond her comprehension it's mind-boggling. And the answer may haunt her dreams more than Angel wings. Better not to know.

With no answer forthcoming, Misato settles back, letting her eyes unfocus. She falls into a loop of ferocious sanity, gripping it with both hands, clinging to empty promises of brighter days. Of catching up and speeding up, blurring through the motions and assimilating them simply to live, to not slow down for anything or anyone. Piecing through everything significant after the ghost in the mirror faded away.

Looking back at lost opportunities and paths taken, Misato tries to ignore the empty spot inside. That hollow place just behind the scar tissue. _It's all scar tissue. _There's no disconnect anymore. In that moment, she fears there were no connections, it was all lies. Simply expedient to her goals. Doubting and replaying every encounter.

Now sitting here with this bizarre little girl she's disquieted. Call it projecting one's circumstances upon another. Misato looks in Aki's eyes to see the vacancy. If only she'd talk. No. She won't. The kid knows what looking at death is like. And it stole her voice away, leaving the husk in the field, waiting to rot.

And that's all there is. This husk.

All there is to do is simple waiting.

And there is no talking between moments.

* * *

2015

NERV HQ, Geo-Front

"It begins."

"Mmm?" Sub-Commander Fuyutski squints, looking through the blinding white light enshrouding the form of NERV's Commander. The light always plays with his eyes, pouring in through the massive windows behind the desk, occluding everything save a single silhouette. The man wouldn't have it otherwise. Kozou pinches his nose, thumbs massaging his eyes, looks again.

There, the center, where Gendo Ikari always sits. The black shape casting long shadows. It moves.

"The Sixth has arrived, Kozou. Last night with Captain Katsuragi."

The Sub-Commander sighs, setting down the paper and gazing up at the hints of color in the ceiling. The Tree is hidden. Strange.

"I know. I don't understand why the Committee thought this was a good plan."

"Pressure, plain and simple. Maybe they believe dropping their little psychopath in our lap is beneficial." Gendo snorts. He shifts, casting a nuclear shadow against the far wall. "Kiel thinks himself clever, trying to emulate the Dummy Program."

"Yes, but they have actual hard data to back their claims," Kozou calmly states. Folding his hands atop his paper, he waits for the sigh.

Ikari sighs, typing something into his personal terminal. "Correct as always, sensei. And with Rei recovering in the hospital, we're behind schedule. And now, we may actually have to rely on this Yamato girl until the Third arrives. Doesn't that seem so very fortuitous on the council's part? Here we sit, hands tied, so to speak, and Project-M wraps up. Hmm." Gendo's fingers drum five rounds rapid against the gigantic hardwood desk. Both men are frowning.

"Wrap up is one way to put it."

Silence crawls into the room. Something's changed. The Old Men altered the scenario. Willingly. What did it mean? Any deviation threw surety out the window. That council of geriatrics preferred argument and chastising and their brand of half-logic. And a strict policy of fundamental adherence. The fate of the Project-M command staff proved that. Send the surviving candidate off for use; execute the fools who bungled the process so badly. Send their prodigal child to Headquarters. Perfectly rational.

God help them all.

"What do you think?"

The old man shrugs, feeling the first pangs of genuine worry. Thoughts swirl around in his head for a time, formulating a thousand responses. The old days come back to him; the university days. He's in the classroom again, helping a student ferret out a thesis from a tangle of ideas. The thought brings a wan smile to his lips. If only his reply were more erudite.

"Frankly, they're handing us the gun and praying we pull the trigger." Straightening up, he looks out the windows to his left. Through the mirror-bright light a vague impression of the world outside shows in smudges and smears of dull color. This absurd game of will brought him into the fold long ago, so why not play on? The only other option is death. He composes himself.

The words come easily.

"What I worry about are inevitable questions. Questions will be asked among the ranks. 'Where are the other Children? Why the _Sixth_? What happened to this poor girl? Who is she?' And so on. We can't get proper records even if we beg the Committee. So are our lies just as good as their silence? None shall buy it, Ikari." The words come naturally, being able to vocalize reservation for once.

"And perhaps the best I can imagine: Why in God's name are we pumping her full of drugs? Yes, this will go swimmingly for us, Ikari. Why hamstring the operation? Years of careful work jeopardized by a ham-fisted operation to get rid of evidence."

A bony knuckle raps on the phonebook-thick report sitting there on the table. The Sub-Commander can't reign in the contempt coloring his voice.

"Look at the photos. We've seen the others not included in this _fantastic _scholarly piece. Whatever Kiel's little game is, it's dangerous. Word of this gets out and NERV's ruined. The UN and SSDF will be on us in moments, smelling blood in the water." The Commander makes neither move nor reply. He lines up his thoughts, throat drying, then: "They'll parade us out before The Hague. The cavalcade of horrors in Terminal Dogma and the data in the MAGI memory banks won't win us any friends. End of scenario.

A cough and Fuyutski balls his fingers to fists.

"That is my honest opinion of the matter. We should drop her, Ikari, but there's no asylum yet built for this… This." Fuyutski swallows his next statement, instead relying on a refined sense of realism."There's also no way to refute the Committee right now."

No need to see the frown on Ikari's face. Frustration is such a rare emotion to witness concerning Gendo Ikari, the Sub-Commander feels privileged whenever it arises. The man attempts to be implacable so much, you forget he does in fact harbor other emotions.

_But then again, most of those died years ago. Didn't they, Ikari?_

Words close the distance, "—played, Kiel. I'll speak with them soon."

"We have no core data, no Pribnow simulation tests, and no real idea of how her personality works." The report sways clumsily as he hefts it up, shaking it contemptuously. "This psychological evaluation is _three years old_. They didn't even try to keep updates. She should be in an asylum, not a war machine. But here she is. And we have no answers as to why."

The only utterance is an 'hmm.'

Kozou presses on, feeling no reason to quit the advance. "The Old Men throw a spanner into their own works, why?" Answers are commodities traded in blood. There is none to give. Not now. The glossy cover of the Project-M report mocks him. His eyes linger on the fig leaf and the inverted apple stamped there. There isn't enough blood in the seas to get the answers_. _He represses laughing at the sheer absurdity of it.

Why perpetuate the cycle? Why put a decidedly human stamp of approval on it? As if things weren't bad enough with what's sprung from scientific minds after Second Impact.

Current Children and candidates for Project-E are their own breed of future psychosis and little else. An entire classroom of candidates sits within the city waiting to be drawn upon if the need arises. Cheap, disposable infantry. The war machines matter far more than the Pilots—for the most part—ever will. There are no more children. A frown neatly parts his face.

Project-M ostensibly began to artificially recreate E's conditions for candidates and focus that ability with conditioning both mental and chemical. Along with the automated delivery systems, forced synchronization, parents eliminated to introduce necessary trauma, invasive surgery and a dozen other atrocities under any set of rational laws.

And it succeeded. From a certain point of view.

The old man sighs, lamenting the fate of any of those children is a useless gesture. An attempt for self-pity or rationalizing what they were doing here at NERV. Inevitably, Fuyutski finds himself doing just that nigh weekly. There are no words of reconciliation or aid to give these children. There never will be. All he _can_ do is play this sick game and pray for a favorable outcome. Tempering his erstwhile pupil's forceful hand in matters is the highest hope he can achieve.

Never has he felt so impotent.

Picking up the newspaper, he stares through the kanji scrawled on the pages. No true prodigies or portents dwell in the headlines, nothing has changed in fifteen years save for the slow death of the human race in conscience and conflict.

* * *

In a small room somewhere in the halls of NERV, a closet shuts violently. The room is quiet now. A moment ago, a muffled cry and the shattering of glass.

A black duffel bag mars the uniform white of the quiet room. The bed is a mess, sheets torn away, long ragged strips hanging off the edges of the cot. Prison bar shadows stretch across the room from the hard yellow light streaming through the window. Between the bars, bits and pieces of winking glass slide and settle here and there. A pile of roots and stomped petals are all that remain of the daisies that gave the roof a touch of life.

Someone mutters in the closet. Then long stretches of silence.

A girl wraps the ripped sheets and blanket round her body in the dark of the closet, slamming her eyes shut against the voices whispering in her ears. A single piece of sheet is wrapped round a bloody foot, staunching the result of a moment of anger.

Her eyes fly open and bloodshot eyes stare at the single line of door light piercing the dark.

"Momma…"

No one hears.

* * *

A/N: Holy crap have I written and re-written this chapter a thousand damn times. I think the final product came out okay. The first draft of this wasn't even done at about forty-five hundred words. But roughly half of it was…unsatisfying to the extreme. I've been chopping off two thousand words at a time from each rendition. That's why it's taken a while. I've cut at least 5000 words total.

Overall, a shorter chapter, but a solid one.

And I'm enjoying my portrayal of Misato quite a bit. Sure, she's still bubbly on the outside, but I always felt there should be a stronger twist with her semi-PTSD and her own unique Hedgehog dilemma. When I thought about it, Aki makes a nice little connection with Misato. Not on any real level, but as a reflection.

Roughly the same thing can be said for what I'm doing with Fuyutski. I love his character. Fuyutski, Ibuki, and Kaji are probably my favorite characters in the whole show with Aoba's apathetic ass not far behind them.

And yes, I know reflectorized isn't a word, but I ran into it in a novel once and fell in love with it. So there.

I enjoyed writing it. Hope you enjoy reading it.


	3. CIII

**Disclaimer: **This is a work of fan fiction. The author does not own anything concerning Gainax's IP Neon Genesis Evangelion. The company gives the word and this comes down.

_**Acceptable Losses**_

**C-III**

2015

NERV HQ, Central Dogma, MAGI Mainframe

Captain Katsuragi walks into the very heart of Central Dogma to find chaotic surgery commencing.

The MAGI triumvirate sits propped and canted eight degrees outside their individual bulwark and the area hums with human and artificial life. A great mob of technicians, programmers, and shanghaied engineers flows over the supercomputers like a carpet of sterile army ants. Diagnostic monitors stream constant code-EKG.

The air is filled with the tang of machine oil and ozone. It's a bizarre massacre to the untrained eye. Tangles of cables pour out of service tunnels, the plastic viscera hooped up in great piles. Squat blue current runners sits next to these open wounds, feeding their parasitic rubber veins deep into the superstructures. Giant wide-blade fans sit in island clusters thrumming and sucking out the nauseating fumes radiating out from the tunnels.

Captain Katsuragi feels momentary confusion. She didn't even know there are upgrades planned for this quarter outside of typical maintenance.

She knows only a handful of these people. Katsuragi doesn't even know why she's here. Lying to oneself makes life so much simpler. She'd have an easier time trying to pilot the Test Type than telling the truth to herself in this case.

Doctor Ritsuko Akagi hides inside quiet Melchior, running the ritual diagnostics. Captain Katsuragi imagines the close quarters inside, surrounded by all that circuitry. Soft whirs and hums come forth from the depths of the aloof machines. The feel of the gale winds blowing through.

_Inside a metal coffin, feeling like the doors on either end with hydraulically seal you in._

The image never fails to be unnerving. Enough metal coffins have come and gone from her life. She straightens her beret then stands at parade rest, waiting for the head surgeon to complete her diagnosis. She bites the inside of her cheek to still the sudden temblor crashing through her nerves like live current and desperately eradicates the sudden scent of seawater.

"Excuse me, ma'am!"

Misato smiles as First Lieutenant Ibuki shuffles by, carrying a load of keyboards and interlinks and what looks a handful of arc-welding goggles. Silver-rimmed welding goggles covering her eyes paint an amusing picture for a true mad scientist. The ear-to-ear grin doesn't hurt either. The lieutenant deposits all the materiel by Caspar and tugs a pair of long-sleeved leather gloves from her belt on. Katsuragi can't recall the last time she saw Lieutenant Ibuki so pleased with herself.

"Going for the full mad scientist, Maya?" Ibuki grins widely, surprisingly overjoyed at the statement.

"I wish. Do you know how much more _fun_ it'd be to wake up in the morning, ma'am?" Maya chuckles and ducks into the Melchior service tunnel. Deft little tunnel rat, she's vanished in seconds.

An indistinct dialogue comes echoing out, then a terse command telling everyone to take five. A few techs come crawling out; most blabbering in rapid-fire technobabble that goes straight into the 'Ignore' bin. A hurried series of hard white flashes erupt in the tunnel. A harsh electric ripping sound sizzles deep in her inner ear.

Arc welding always reminds her of the Renault whenever it's in the shop. She tries to hide a private smile, trying to retain some professional composure.

A familiar voice calls out above the hiss of spitting welders. "Is the Sixth still sleeping in closets?"

Instantly, the reasons why she's here come flooding back. _Dumb idea. Shouldn't even be here._ Resolve falters a moment. A damn fool plan cooked up while drawing on napkins, hungover and alone at five AM.

Misato looks down to the crawlspace and hefts Ritsuko out, white lightning flashing in anger at the interruption. "Hard work?"

Ritsuko merely nods, taking a deep breath of the outside air. Sweat beads her forehead, the notable beauty mark of her cheek sits in a sea of reddened flesh. Running a shaky hand through her hair, the doctor searches the coverall's deep pockets. "I don't understand how Technical can issue these damn slops. I'm stewing. Christ, I lost my kerchief." The growling sigh tells it all. "I hate my job. I…"

A rag is passed over by one of the junior grades working on the outer casings. Misato hears the blonde (_muddy hair, the dye is fading…_) mutter something like 'She's laughing over this one.' The doctor is tense, whipcord tight. She mops her face with the torn rag. The meticulous make-up is gone today. There are arguments to be made. No, this isn't Ritsuko Akagi, just a pissy tradeswoman twin. A pod person: off-white face and stringy, muddy hair.

"Bad day?"

What a poor choice of words.

"No, I live a charmed life; we're just drinking sake and hanging out. God, yes, _look_ at this!" Ritsuko gestures at the swarming crew and the most advanced computers on earth taken apart bit by bit like plastic toy models.

The doctor's face pinches in anger and a dozen new creases mar her smooth face. "I can't see the end of this madness. All of the work I've done. For nothing. The entire set up was _perfect_ for any and all Evangelion A10 b-c interfaces. Now…now with the Sixth here, overhauls. _Overhaul _the entire data entry program, Ikari told me. Bullshit_._ I spent three months writing the data uplink software alone for this goddamn monolith before we started testing with Unit-00.

"_Tests_. So many variables and protein barriers to reconnect… This diminishes everything we've done. Maya and the entire team have put in far too much time to be told 'do it again.' I…I will be silent now, before I advocate armed rebellion."

Milling-about workers carefully toggle their hearing to [Orders Only].

"Already? The M-Type Plugs only just arrived. The Commander can't expect tests yet… can he?" Misato frowns, looking up at the MAGI. The hiss of the welders swells in the tunnel. "Isn't that dangerous with all the sensitive equipment in there?"

The doctor issues a dismissive snort. "No, we soldered in a few things earlier. Data correction too, I re-wrote the synthetic protocols." A pause, then, "Around 0100 hours, I guess. The welders are sealing off old ports. I'm not worried; Maya's got them on a tight leash. There's so much steel between the circuits and the maintenance tunnel it won't matter." She slowly shakes her head, jaw jutting out in a primal display. "Might as well have told me to strip an N2 and put it back together blindfolded. _So_ far behind now…"

Misato winces, watches the doctor rub the bridge of her nose and fish around for aspirin. The rote response to all stress in the Akagi household. Aspirin, cooling anger, power through, triumph, rinse, repeat. The work goes on around them, the two sitting in an island of electronic organs and veins of fiber optic cable. Misato figures the talking helps, relieves the pressure with a release valve of words.

"I've not read the whole file yet. No need for curlers?"

The doctor's smile hardly warms her flinty face. "Not one bit. Plug and drug. It takes care of everything apparently. While that's incredibly efficient in theory, the new data corrupts any and all preset parameters in the virtual core simulations, the Pribnow Box, our settings with Rei and any E-class pilots like Soryu. Christ. All that data is gone, incompatible. Soryu's data was fours years in the making. It's a joke.

"It's a sick joke, for that matter. I imagine the city council is now sucking its collective thumb. They have to make real decisions for a few days instead of sitting in their chairs knuckling out some kids."

Misato chokes down her reasons for coming. Akagi_ is_ pissed. A different approach is needed. "Uh, I-I, uh, don't think I've ever seen you dressed like this, Rits."

She laughs. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess not. I don't enjoy it. I feel better in a skirt most times. I feel out of place in this getup. Eh." They observe the effort a while longer. "Hmm. The Sixth still sleep in that closet?"

"Yep. Absolutely refuses to sleep on a bed. Just sits there and stares in the closet. At least she's eating again. Haven't you had time to check her over?"

An insomniac Pilot who rarely eats or ventures out and if she does, it's only with one of the security team clinging to her like a second skin. No violence, no strange occurrences as the Children's file warned of. Small miracles. Small miracle she tolerates _anyone. _

"Physical is about all." Ritsuko replies. "I've had to take care of my white whale here. I'll look into the Sixth's status soon. Between this, Yamato, Rei, I'm amazed I find time to write out the triplicate reports," she says, whispering as if it warded the work off.

Misato shifts from one foot to the other, psyching herself up. Her mien shifts, tight for the argument about to be sparked off. _Now or never._ "Should Aki even _be_ here? I mean, in this place? Alone? It seems to be Crèche 2.0 for her." _Minus_ _her friends dying around her and all of the mistreatment_, it takes all of Katsuragi's strength to not say that aloud.

"Who's crazy enough to take her in as a ward? There's—no. _No._ Don't give me that look. God, Misato this is _not_ the time to start in with your impulse goddamn behavior. Maybe you could have taken in one of our less psychotic Pilots, but Aki? You're crazy. _She's_ crazy. You read the report."

There is that. The six page report neatly tacked on to the Sixth's psychological evaluation was enlightening. Very enlightening. The Crèche didn't bother to keep up to date psycho-analysis for whatever reason. It cost them. The detached voice of a security chief and the sworn statements of former co-workers of Doctor Tennyson tell the tale. The violence sitting inside the Sixth is nothing short of awe worthy.

She could not be around doctors very long, which is a horrible situation in relation to her unique ailments. Sedation is the kneejerk reaction, but it impedes so many things. Misato wonders how the kid made it this long. Should she have? No, probably not. Something vicious and red-eyed inside Katsuragi beats the thought into submission before it goes further.

"—zone out so much. Everything okay?" murmurs Akagi, her tired voice fading in like a faulty broadcast.

"Can we talk about this later then?" Misato pulls herself back to reality. A light clicks on in the hallway her mind has become in the past week. Empty and cobwebs sticking to the corners. Her limbs feel lead-lined and pencil-thin. She tries to think of the last time she ate, finds the memory wanting. The idea of microwaveable pork curry from the corner store does not carry grateful tidings from her stomach.

Ritsuko appears dubious, shrugs, hands digging around in the numerous pockets of the coverall. "Sure. Walk with me." A crumpled pack of 520s appears in her hands.

"You're still smoking those hokey little things?"

"Quiet."

The pair leaves the MAGI mainframe, striding down number four walkway into the yawning central lift shaft. They settle at a railing and look over the edge. Misato's eyes trace the giant stenciled numbers all the way down, down, down, until they become nothing more than white blobs smeared on steel somewhere near level twenty.

A match being struck breaks the silence and soon the semi-sweet scent of the heart-stamped 520 fills the air.

Misato remembers then—the thoughts plucked from the ether—a pack that used to sit on her nightstand in college. Crumpled, nameless, always had two filters jutting out the end at all times. It had been that way since the beginning of time. They tasted of sweat. She can picture languid smiles. It's a pleasant memory, though tinged with ever present sadness of days wasted, time lost.

A relationship not worth the time put in. She hasn't smoked since then. Not since Kaji. What she would give to take all that stupidity back.

"Pen-Pen not enough trouble for you to take care of? Is that why you want the Sixth under your roof?"

The memory fades, smoke out the window.

"No. He's fine. I do what I can for him. Besides, I already put in my request for to move out of the sty I'm in now. You've seen it. Luddy told me they may have something in Orowa. It'll be nice, won't be so far out."

"You're not answering me."

"I know." she whispers, twirling a lock of hair round a single digit, trying not to tug at it in mounting frustration.

"Oh, that's helpful." The cigarette flares from a long drag. It rests between two fingers, bits of ash spiral into the shaft below. "What's this about?"

"Maybe the Sixth desires actual human interaction outside of all this? No doctors or NERV personnel on-duty."

"No, what she _needs_ is rehab for a few years. Irony is all the meds the psychiatrists will need to give her to keep that little girl on the level. She'd probably take them in stride."

"I know. But…she's not Rei." The doctor blinks incomprehension. Misato goes on, "Listen. Rei can function by herself. She does well enough. We keep an eye on her, sure, but she can do it. Aki can never live like that."

"She's taken care of. And Rei is a far different case than Aki. _Far_ different. You're drawing at straws. But you damn well know what I do: Aki's broken. Utterly. Any overtures from you will have completely unknown repercussions. And there's a big chance it'll be violent. Let her sleep in those little closets. Like I said, I can understand if you did this for any Pilot _but_ Aki. Even _Rei_ would be a better option." Ritsuko declares, staring at the double-helix smoke rising from the heart-stamped cigarette.

Captain Katsuragi looks around at the empty promenade. It bothers her. The vacancy of the central lift shaft always bothers her. It only makes the moment that much more uncomfortable. She fixates on the profile of her confidant. Her voice lowers.

"I _know_ I can't fix her. I just think this would go more smoothly if she lived with someone."

Doctor Akagi finishes off the cigarette, the bright cherry snuffed out on the safety rail. The filter tumbles end over end down to the depths. Misato keeps an eye on it until it fades from sight. _Maybe it'll land near the LCL plant way down there._

"Bullshit, here's what I think…" Misato ignores the oncoming tirade with practiced ease. It lasts for six minutes exactly. The same tired arguments that matter between friends.

A sardonic grin creases Misato's lips. She could care less. There'll be no wavering. The real reasons are carefully locked away under layers of immaculate denials.

The words 'lonely' and 'childish' fail to break through the barriers of willful ignorance. It doesn't matter. It's always the same. Not like Akagi didn't do the same when Misato goes on her own tears. The same since the tail end of their time at New Tokyo University.

Ritsuko Akagi learned a nasty lesson on what buttons can never be pushed. Trying to take Misato's cross and trash it because it's 'just some fucking crutch for daddy's girl' was a big red one. A ceramic ashtray missile cracked the blond's cheek shortly after the cross fell into a wastebasket.

They were kicked out of college for the damage to the common room kitchen and their own physical and mental states. Misato needed twenty-seven stitches. Ritsuko needed thirty-two. Then two days after, negotiators showed up unannounced. They spoke with the administration for just one hour and it was as if they stepped into some bizarre land.

Clemency came down from on high. Penalty: one year probation and revocation of minor scholarships. Slap on the wrist.

Then, an entire year spent under the eye of sycophantic counselors.

Both of them got their asses kissed on the college's dime. It all stank of Naoko Akagi pulling strings. No, can't bear this stain to family pride. Misato didn't have to worry about breathing relatives or family; ghosts apparently cleared the way for her. Misato's counselor held her hand through the whole process, praising her father's work. She still doesn't know the whys or wherefores. Dad's ghost levied a fine amount of adulteration to the findings and kept her in school for graduation.

_He never cared when he was alive. He certainly didn't _then_. He was dead. _

When all was said and done, both women hardly spoke to one another. A robust fear settled deep in the bones after the incident.

They were very polite to one another the few times they actually had to interact. The uneasiness was palpable.

Things only settled with a post-college communication blackout. Time simply went by and the world kept turning. Two years of zero contact, not a peep over phone, not a written word, not even a text message. Misato only received a tentative overture in 2008 when she was quitting her job at Yutani-Gaea. The tenuous reconnection built up steam when Misato joined Gehirn's Third Branch in Hamburg the next year.

Then it all just blurred together, Naoko Akagi's suicide, the formation of NERV… the pair became close again. And Misato didn't mind at all because time healed all wounds—she knew. There were still the lingering memories of the anger. But it faded, little by little, in the fullness of time. They simply learned how to work around it.

One woman vents about the other's faults and the other ignores lest something regretful be said and, God forbid, _heard_. The arguments get no further than raised voices that way. A very nice and neat solution. She feels sweat running down her back.

"Ahem."

Katsuragi starts; realizing Akagi wants an answer to whatever was said. The oldest reply works best. Misato summons up a coy smile as she leans on the railing overlooking the drop.

"Are you done?"

"Hmph. For now. This isn't over. I can assemble all the necessary paperwork tomorrow—"

"Thanks."

"—don't mention it." Akagi finishes, smoothly drawing out another cigarette. "…only try to think hard about what you're getting into. I don't see either the Commander approving this for your peace of mind or out of any sudden sense of compassion. I mean that."

"Duly noted! See you in the mess later."

They part.

* * *

Access Road 13, Geo-Front

From the shore, an unnatural panorama spreads out before the Sixth Children. A broad lake nestled amongst the rolling hills of this Geo-Front, capped with a hammered aquamarine cap. She's never seen clear water. _Clear._ Maybe one of those weird blue water preserves she heard so much about. But there don't seem to be any fish, no little silverlings flashing round her feet. The only sound is the waters lapping quietly at the black soil shore.

It's as if she's walked into a picture book, colorful and rich with images that the administrators gave after play hour.

_Blue_ _water_. Always whispered about, never seen, the elusive specter called life.

A powerful need slowly takes hold, to swim (sink?), to build a plank raft, to be _out there_ among those little waves. Be Max on an island of beasts. See if the blue takes her breath away if she sinks, if it takes her somewhere special. Instead, she knows, there is only the dusty Room where there are no adventures and only the dead begging entry.

Her feet rest in the cool waters, shifting and sinking a little more into the mud at each withdrawal of the submissive tide. Little eddies and currents cling to her toes.

The soupy mud is refreshingly cool against her chalk white skin. She giggles, her crooked toes dig up smooth pebbles. Great clouds of black mud coaxed up by flexing toes obscure her lower legs. _Oh yes_, she thinks, _far more fun than the Room_. The hollow echoes of knuckles rapping on a rusted chain door go ignored. There is nothing wrong with her brain. Her fingers trace stark black veins creeping across slat shins, parting the sheet of water covering them. Her fingers return covered in a fine sheen of dirt and oily water.

She looks up at the white, curving sky and the golden traceries left by accelerating tramcars. Being underground is fantastic. No one ever explained a whole other world lie just under the ground. She likes the Geo-Front. A microcosm of nature filled with quiet, non-staring folk who never asked questions and never stared.

Hills veined with smooth transit roads loom all around. Those hills carpeted in thick pine forests. There's so much green, the wind smells like clover. Nothing stale dwells here, the world slows down, grows. Nothing passes by. Earlier, a flock of white birds flew overhead, squawking and raising hell. They may have been gulls of some sort or maybe doves. Dulls. Such fine wit wasted on a rattled brain. She laughs 'til she cries.

_Water under the bridge. _

_I know, Miss Amuro. Leave me alone. Heh. Heh heh…_

Part of her wants to glimpse another animal. _Any _animal, there must be some. There, beyond the cleft of two hills lie imagined caves, gaping mouths settled in the crooks of gullies that run all the way to dome-edge. They sit there, waiting to be found. Myriad portals winding to the earth's heart beating 'neath layers of dead rock. Were they as dark as closets? Entry plugs?

Dark enough that just stepping in eradicates you from the waking world? Did they lead down? Were there mice? Quiet and nibbling like the ones in Goodwin's office are preferable. His, his…his _pets,_ yes, that's the word.

Maybe those mice are still alive and running around their wheels. They may have let the old man keep his pets. That's nice of them. Yes, happily spinning in their wheels and unaware of the world out—Out_side. _A breeze passes through sending sudden ripples across the lake. Her hands freeze in mid-air. Vision blurs as her left eye begins to roll back independently of the right. Not enough gas pumps to the generator. The bellows aren't fueling the fire.

Out_side._

There's nothing wrong. No. Normal service resumes.

Maybe those mice are still alive, running around their wheels. They may have let the old man keep his pets. That's nice of them. Yes, happily spinning in their wheels and unaware of the world outside. Imagining those mice somewhere in those dark halls, clawing at the corners of their cages begging for food…hurt and twists something deep inside her heart.

Hurt disgusts Aki. She blinks her vision clear.

_Odd, when did that happen?_

"Guh…dammit."

She glances over her left shoulder, looks at the men up there. Not a peep. Though, there are things to be learned in the past few weeks. The Shadows are surprised by the oddest things. Especially the laughter. So what if she laughed? Or became filthy again? Their car had such nice towels draped over the back seats now. Warm. They're behind her, perched on the berm of the hill, watching. One of them is speaking with the air again.

Her lips soundlessly mimic the slovenly words filtering down, gesticulating robotically and pivoting around like her torso rests on ball bearings. Mimicry presents a perfect time to listen. The first lesson she ever learned. The adults would stare and ignore her and the others when they mocked them—children at play. Clarity and purpose took hold in their fertile minds.

Ng-man hums, singing to himself. The occasional bit of French slips down on the wind.

She flings a clump of mud into the water, _plop—_smiles. The ripples do not cease to fascinate. Alterations to reality sit before her. What to change, and when to change, and how to change, all in her power. It terrifies Aki deep to the core. There is no true structure to things here. All she does is sleep and eat and sit in the Room staring at wolves. That's what looks back from the mirrors.

She scoots down further, seeing what passes for local tide coming in. A sheet of silver rushes over her legs, up into her clothes. A squeal of delight escapes. The water rushes up over her thighs, an icy shock seeps through the soaked NERV uniform. The tan fabric sits restless and baggy on her thin legs.

For all the novelty that clear water brings, it's not her Red Memory. They won't take her to the sea. She's forgotten how to ask. There is nowhere to float. They utterly refuse to let her float in the lake. Just a few minutes can't hurt. Face down, it won't hurt. No, just breathe deep, a bit of cold and it'd fill her up… How long to the bottom is anyone's guess.

It wouldn't hurt.

A boat is compromise. But there are no boats.

The destroyer resting in the lake is a poor facsimile. It's an empty lie, filled with missiles and men ready to die. A floating cock old men use as a sword, nothing more. There is only nature and metal pyramids under the earth. No harm. No monsters. Useless virility encased in steel. It will sit in this water forever. Never move or see its true purpose. It could be a museum piece.

Or a shield, if there is a need.

_Subjective Maneuver 331 – You are powerful inside the Evangelion, mightier than Hercules. If ever found in sea combat…_

The silly instructional cartoon plays in slow motion, bounding around with manic energy behind her eyes. The bouncing alien-looking chibi defends against the white sprite ghosts with the huge owl-like black eyes. Looping, screaming. Explosions. Cheery music. She smiles.

Sudden pain explodes in her sinuses, ice pick through the eye socket. Twisting.

The scent of chalk and sickly sweet perfume fills the air. Wildflowers. She slips. The world stretches, she slides back down the umber tunnel. She hates sitting next to the projector and its constant grating hum. What's that smell?

_Oh God, Naejima, not _now_. _

A thousand flashbulbs blind her creating constellations of opaque stars in the mind's eye.

_Stop. Taking pictures. Now._

_Don't put that in me…please._

-**CALM**-

Still sliding back down a black tunnel covered in grease and stops suddenly in a seat.

* * *

The eye-watering stench clings to Miss Mackelson, the smooth faced fool who led their combat focus group. Glorified projector-monkey. Next slide, please.

Always strutting, legs cocked, arrogant little smiles, the 'how are _you_, today' and that weird violet lipstick always painted on her lips. It always disturbed Mack how the children tried to touch her wavy bobbed hair. Soft like happiness, said the few who were lucky enough get a piece.

Jude asked for a piggyback ride one day and simply buried his face in that elusive pillow of hair seconds later. His fingers wove into the thick mass and the woman shrieked in surprise. '_Soft_!' he cried over and over. He was king for a day. Maddy and Ophelia made a paper crown out of black construction paper and gave him a sloppy kisses on the forehead.

He took two tabs that night and was so strung out that they took him to the infirmary. He screamed about the haunters in the dark all the way down the hall.

It happened.

The choice of Mack's lipstick color fascinated the children. Aki remembers the bet among her friends that purple was Mack's true _skin color_. That dark tan wasn't fooling any of them. Pancake makeup and powder mixed with brown sugar. There followed appellations sprouting in still fertile imaginations. Savory rebellions they could revel in. Their favorites were "Grapesucker" and "Purple People Eater." The adults always laugh at the last one. But that was the meanest one they had for Mackie.

She certainly liked to eat one person.

* * *

Aki snorts, braces herself in the sand, failing to not fall over laughing.

Section Two watch very carefully from above. Carter nods at one of the men. He sighs and hops to.

Agent Ng starts down the steep hill, carefully finding sure footing in the packed soil. She may make a run for the water. Not on their watch. Ng carefully rounded to her left, walking in a slow semi-circle. It was like approaching a wounded animal, trying not to startle it and chase it down. Ng shakes his head, his mouth plowed into a hard flat line beneath salt-and-pepper stubble. He reaches down with a hand as wide as her waist.

_She's off in her own world again._

He sighs and looks up at the others, toggled the mike, "We wait."

* * *

Mack was Doctor Olivia Tennyson's 'special friend'.

They regularly held 'conferences' in private places, sometimes the generator room. Long or short, the children noted that the two came back so bright-eyed and distracted. Not so different from the norm, perhaps they'd merely been arguing over specific classes or the newest shift schedules. None the wiser, one would say. All was well until the night Naejima spied them leaving the generator room. The…noises had attracted her there.

The two must have figured privacy was assured amongst the churning machinery for their bugger sessions. The vibrating metal probably felt good against skin in hindsight. Adults were bizarre about fucking. Nor were they too sharp at hiding it.

Pity they failed to factor in the children who knew every square inch of their little love hotel with oil accents.

Hiding from security was a regular event, so the kids knew all the good spots. After Naejima stumbled upon their little game, finding the lovers became _the_ new regular event. Usually, once every two weeks, someone would come into the playroom giggling and red-faced.

'Havin' lunch,' 'hard work' (always followed by Ophelia and Mikhail's exhausted straining act), 'conference call', 'pushin' and shovin',' 'God Is In His Heaven,' et cetera, et cetera. The barracks rang with laughter every time. Aki barely remembers the good laughs. Lots of plastic bodies roll on their beds, holding their sides, clicking in laughter.

But the context never fades. The mannequins sing along with her and the shadows, everything coming up like spring flowers, full of life and laughter.

_Mack and Tenny, fuckin' in a tree…_

Furious hands hammer at the barracks door, people screaming. Ignored in the blissful reverie.

The final time they stumbled upon them always stuck out in Aki's mind. Aki, Jude, and Maddy saw much and more that day, watching through a cracked door.

The light always glistens off Mack's stockings in the hazy memory. Tennyson played underneath Mackelson's skirt trying to poke her fingers inside. They were propped up against the workstation nestled between the checkerboard fuse panels and a cluster of cold water pipes. Clothes piled ankle deep around them. Mack wore only some skimpy lace bra, surely for modesty. Tennyson was clothed, rocking hard and fast into her lover's bare knee.

Their kisses were fumbling, hungry. The doctor growled. Their skin clapped together, fused, becoming some sweaty mass of voices. Aki tasted ashes.

Mack's fingers trip over one another to unbutton Tennyson's blouse, trying to reach the little fleshy peaches inside. She moans out her pathetic chorus trying to please the other participant.

There were wet sounds, awful sounds. Sounds like sticking your finger in yogurt, again and again, and the air _squelches_ out each time it withdrew. They moaned and struggled around a while, bones and skin melding into a single disgusting creature. Aki watched the doctor finger her peer, vacantly licking Mack's neck. The air filled with a cloying musk. As they watch from their hidden privy near the door, gears turn in Aki's head. One thing became clear.

This was something Aki never wants to experience.

Maddy gagged, covered her mouth with a shaking hand, cried off. Much later, she told Aki it was the sounds that bothered her the most.

"The smell didn't bother me. It was their faces. Tenny's blank as always. Mack looked s-sad? Like…like, like confused? Didn't she look confused?" Aki only shrugged in reply. What did any of them know? It just looked like a ball of flesh clawing at itself, panting and straining to release tension. Maddy never liked that answer.

Jude got real quiet and red-faced when asked. Aki _knew_ what he thought.

But everything ends. Their little voyeur session did when Mack sank to her knees in front of the good doctor to being stimulation with a non-regulation tongue stud.

Aki laughed at the absurdity of it all and everything went to horseshit.

One of them screamed. Jude later said it was Tennyson which surprised them all. That pleased Aki.

It was the first time she ever met lovely Tenny's white gold rings. No movement, only the follow through and impact. The crumple of cheek bones sounds so much like egg shells shattering on the floor. Aki hit the floor. There were screams and attempts to crawl away. Noisy clacks of high heels ringed out above the drone of the generators on the concrete. There were other blows to the body. Sloppy, misaimed, but painful nonetheless.

Jude and Maddy stood there—eyes wide with shock and disgust—too startled to cry out.

A vise coated with sticky, foul-smelling oil sealed around Aki's neck. Air cut off, valves shut, and something audibly popped in her cheek. The left eye went blind.

Jude bit the doctor's thin wrists and Maddy pried Tennyson's overpowering fingers from Aki's throat. Mack just sat there rocking back on her naked rear, stunned, trying to make sense of the mood shift. It hit her a beat later; naked, she lunged at Tennyson, screamed at her, and pulled her back away from the children.

_No_, she thought as Maddy drug her bodily to the infirmary, _this isn't something I want_.

The medics found them at the access shaft to the testing chambers, sitting quietly. All three of them stare into the dark, even with half of Aki's face malformed and nearly indigo from the temple to the chin.

They pump her with painkillers. They repair her cheek with pins, wire, and plates. It takes a year and one stint of plastic surgery to fully fix. They ply her with privileges, extra tabs, extra food, anything to forget this '_unfortunate lapse in judgment_.' They try to dig out the root of the memories with sessions in the imprinters. They fail as usual.

She never forgets. It all accrues deep down. The Room accumulates all the bad, little of the good. And there's always space for more. Always. The shadows must feed. The mimes need company. She shut another part of herself down and let it wither. It infected the mimes; it stalks behind the glass. All that remains are screams.

_GET OUT! You sick little bastards! OUT! OUT OUT OUT!_

_Where's…where's Mother?_

* * *

"Mother…"

Agent Ng Michel blinks at the utterance from the Sixth Children. She spoke. God above, she said something. Spoken _coherently_ in rough Japanese and worthy of later assessment. He appraised the situation best he could. The throat mike scratches as he takes a breath.

"Lieutenant Carter, she's speaking." He pressed a finger to the chatty ear piece. He grins at the terse reply. The Sixth is looking at him with those haunted, bloodshot eyes. The greatest note of sympathy he can muster flows into his voice. "What was that, kiddo?"

She _looks_ at him. A subtle chill works up his spine and feels the tendrils begin to reach his brain with numb fingers.

Her mouth works but nothing comes out except croaks and clicks. Watery sounds choked by a gummed up throat. She made a noise as if she were going to spit. Ng winces at the spittle dribbling out as she strains with the words.

_She has a mother_? That must be verified, of course. Couldn't be alive. As far as Section Two was concerned, there was no family left. Parents killed in 2004, child taken same year by the Project-M sniffers. Ng reaches out slowly and takes her hand.

"Come now. Time to go back." She takes his hand without hesitation, still straining, veins bulging on her temples, face red. "Easy! Easy…look at me, Miss Yamato."

"Muh-muh-mother is gone. She does not spuh-spuh…speak at _me_."

Ng does not reply to the girl's ghosts. What can be said? He walks in dark places, but nothing akin the void consuming the Sixth's mind. He shrugs, not his place to worry about it. Only watching her movements and keeping her safe mattered. A hot dinner is all he usually worries about when his shift ends and shift change is in twenty. Time to go. This is no time to grow attachments that will undoubtedly shorten his career with NERV and a lifetime full of lovely black lists.

Regardless of that, he gently helps her up the hill.

They go to the car.

The other agents wait in silence.

The car drives off.

* * *

Central Dogma, Upper Tier, Executive Suite Three

"Captain, it's been brought to my attention that you wish to take the Sixth Children into your home. Is this correct?"

The office settles in silence. Fuyutski ignores the constant ringing in his ears. His eyes settle directly on the Operations Director sitting across from him, grim, jaw set. _Like a court-martial. _

"Yes, Sub-Commander."

"I see." He folds his hands and looks at the file between them. Aki Yamato's service record is mainly medical, with few combat simulations and one psychological evaluation that left much to the imagination. "This is rather unprecedented and unexpected to say the least." Doctor Akagi brought this left-fielder to his attention four days ago. He still feels there's something missing from this equation. Too many questions with too few readily apparent answers tax his mental faculties.

"I realize this, sir."

He can hear the nervous tapping of her boot against the rug beneath the desk. Sub-Commander Kozo Fuyutski sighs, pressing cold fingers to his temples for a brief moment. There would be no help from her end.

"Very well. You do understand perfectly that you have zero qualifications for handling a child of her nature? The constant attention and medical aid needed to be at the ready twenty-four-seven is something you do not have. You're also in the process of applying for relocation to more spacious quarters in Orowa. The Sixth would only move in with you—if I even take this to Ikari—after you've settled. Extra medical training must be undertaken as well."

He watches the microscopic twitch at the corner of her lips turn into a bold-faced frown.

"You disapprove?"

She doesn't speak.

"Captain, look, we're—I'm—not doing this to spite you. At the least know that."

"Yes, sir. I know."

"Help me understand why, captain?" Genuine curiosity has taken hold of him since the revelation. Part of him still wishes the Sixth were in an asylum somewhere. She's sick in more ways than her drug dependency. Something that NERV may not be able to handle in the end. That much he knew. The rest he kept close at hand, dug up from the depths of the Second Branch archives.

No one's noticed the small diversion in Melchior's routine processes in the past two days with the overhaul. But soon, something will turn up. He never was a hacker by any means. His associate is worried, but it'd not matter in the end. That reminds him, payment due soon. Easily done. There were too many variables in this move by the Committee, they needed to know more.

The young Katsuragi runs a hand over her smoothed back hair, settling in a look of detached boredom. She fails miserable when the worry sets anxious fissures around her eyes.

He's known Misato Katsuragi for many years now and there is never a dull moment when she tries to ape her late father's charming mannerisms. Trying so hard to display a cold top player manner in whichever matter, from peer-reviewed journals to dealing with SEELE. Too bad he was always outclassed. Now his daughter summons up a calculated genetic memory.

God only knew what bothered her dreams at night.

"I…I can't say, sir," she whispers, fingers twisting her beret clutched in gloved hands.

_So much for trying to play the part of the collected, Misato_. The Sub-Commander pushes himself up and walks round the back of his desk. He leans back against the front lip and faces the Operations Director, folding his arms.

"It's an order, Captain. I will not ask again."

"I don't _know_. I honestly don't." The overhead lights reflect off the stare she fixes on him. "We can sit here for hours and discuss this. She can't stay here alone. She sleeps in closets."

"I know. Lieutenant Ibuki keeps me abreast of the Sixth's habits, so do the intermittent reports from Akagi, along with the regular Section Two reports." He summons up the kindest tones he can, the fatherly way he once advised pupils. There can be only a few words and ways to say this without provoking pain. He settles for the touch of the iron whip, "You have a choice to make, Captain. Tell me now or have this rejected outright."

"I want to help her."

"Not good enough." Another crack. Sharper now. The captain's hands tighten on the beret, screwing it up like a twist-tie. She lowers her gaze, trying to hide her face behind her bangs and failing because of the tight ponytail pulling her hair back. Her determined look crumples for a split second before resetting to the picture of glacial calm.

"She reminds me of me." The quiet admission is barely picked up by Fuyutski's ears. The ringing soon fills the gap left in the screaming silence. "She's me sitting alone and quiet."

_Good God._

"I see." He cups his chin with flexing fingers, regarding the woman before him. A fearful thought appears from nothing, a question to be precise. Is this woman going mad? Dismissed. "Because of the Sixth's mutism?"

The frightened woman-child nods. Now it comes out.

"Do you still wake up scared at night, Captain? Do you dream of the escape pod?"

"A lot of things," says she after a tense silence.

"Look at me, Captain." Fuyutski slowly kneels before the woman, coming to rest on the balls of his feet.

He settles a withered hand on her shoulder when she acknowledges, looking into those small black eyes. Her lip is quivering only slightly. "My mind loves to conjure up what the nuclear strike on Tokyo must have been like. My wife died in Hongokucho, right near the epicenter. And I dream of it often. So you certainly have my sympathies, though even I'm not so arrogant as to say my tragedy throws a pall over yours. I will…I will bring this before Ikari, if only for this."

Captain Misato Katsuragi's face nearly explodes in relief, but stills when he holds up a finger. The Sub-Commander's face hardens.

"However, this is not a guarantee by any means. You will first have to relocate and be damn… _damn _willing to go through all that is necessary. You'll also be given additional time to mull this while the decision process occurs between myself and the Commander. You're obviously going to be present for the live test next week'—Fuyutski notes the look of surprise and nods, continues on—'and you'll get to see what really lurks beneath the surface. She is quiet now, but this girl is dangerous."

"I realize this, sir, I honestly do. She's unstable, but she can be very agreeable too. I've seen the reports, the entire Project file and the photos—"

"No. You have not." S.C. Fuyutski stands, popping the vertebrae in his neck, walking back around his desk and looking at the forest of books, pen holders, the latest Marduk compilations, discs, security reports, and other offal for the item he sought. There, thick black numbers stamped on its face. He held it up between two fingers for the Captain to see. "Security footage from Second Branch, forwarded to me by the cleanup crew. Not part of the 'full' report. Consider this as well in the coming weeks. I trust you read the incident report of Doctor Tennyson?"

Professor Katsuragi's daughter nods, trying pensive as her catch-all appearance now. She scooted forward, ramrod straight at attention. "Yes, I did."

"Good. Now watch it in motion and see what the Sixth can do _outside_ an Evangelion. Must I remind you that you never saw this?" He truly smiles, despite the horrific little theatrical display about to play out. A little levity before horror never lessened the revulsion.

Fuyutski sat in his chair, swiveling his personal computer's screen to where they both could see and slipped the disc in. Carefully, he removes all expression from his face, squints his eyes as the static fills the screen before the playback begins in earnest. There's no need to listen. No sound. He can't truly stomach the video; the first time he watched, he vomited. But right now, it's vital to see, to gauge the reaction of the woman across from him.

They watch the nine minute clip taken in March of 2013. Neither speaks nor moves. It starts innocently enough. A harmless check-up. The Sixth sits wearing a hospital gown, makes no moves or overtures as the EEG net spiders over her skull and electrodes placed on her chest. The doctor chatters, communing with spirits of the air. She liked to talk, to hear herself speak, that's what all the testimonies said. They are alone.

Fuyutski looks at the date stamp shuddering in the corner. 10-03-2013.

Just two years ago, near enough that it makes no matter. Ire defines the relationship between this Olivia Tennyson and Aki Yamato. The pathological hatred in the doctor's wild temper obstructs everything. Goaded by the incident concerning the woman Mackelson and Pilot Yamato's witnessing said events. The doctor's…reaction. There's no sense in it. Hubris killed her. Playing with fire and all the warning signs never registered in her head.

She did as she willed, the Chief Medical Technician of her own little Unit 731. Because abused martially trained drug-amplified killers—no matter the age—_obviously_ never raise a hand to their masters.

There, right there. Whatever sparked the Sixth off is said at two minutes, thirty-six seconds. Doctor Tennyson leans in close, whispers, walks back to her cart of two hypodermics filled with clear solution, scalpels and reams of gauze. If you look carefully enough, you can see the spike in the EKG, sudden mountains in the EEG.

He doesn't need to see what's coming, shakes his head when the Children snaps out of her constant dead-eyed reverie and lunges at the doctor. The EEG rips off her skull as her mouth contorts with a scream of utter rage.

He doesn't need to see it, to see their bodies tumble over the metal cart, tools and needles spilling out across the floor in brilliant silver arcs. So sharp. Nor does he need to see the emaciated Children sink her teeth into the doctor's throat, jerking and whipping her head like an animal tearing at its prey or the first jet of arterial spray shoot out with fearsome pressure against the far wall. Nor imagine how visceral the sound of Tennyson's choking screams are in the small room or feeling the sympathetic pains of the Sixth's thumbs prying her eyes out.

The Captain forcefully swallows a crawling whimper. The Sub-Commander turns a blind eye to her pain. His gaze locks back to the vibrant slaughter on the screen and feels his stomach sink.

Yes, the Sixth finally has the left eye out.

He doesn't need to see the rest at all. The cornered, sickly lion slaughters the hated poacher. The guards would come, stop in horror, stare. Reason reasserts along with a red, running terror. An electric reply, tasers. The lunatic seizes up as the darts find purchase in the sternum, claws covered in flecks of gore and fluid and coats of steaming blood, crumpling down on top of the twitching and desecrated flesh underneath her.

They then drag the Children out, a long milky trail of blood smeared on the linoleum floor, glistening wetly as Doctor Palermo slipped inside to check the writhing marionette on the floor. Dead by now. Bag it, tag it, forget it. Well-practiced in blind eyes, NERV.

"Now do you see, Captain?" he sighs, stares at the red-faced, shaking young woman across from him. He feels sympathy, he does. But there is a part of him that prays this will dissuade and deny any ideas of normality. There is no pleasure in this. The girl is a weapon, a broken, unstable weapons platform. His Operations Director never was.

"Do you understand?"

Shaky hands wipe away tears to push into the tomb-still air of the office. The modern world has no place for scattered nerves, only steel. Your father had steel when the time came, he thinks, when they walked along those black cliffs and spit in God's eye. The Sub-Commander watches the woman-child shed the night terrors of youth and try to don the cloak of detached calm that protects everyone in these times.

"Do you understand?" he repeats.

"No." The facade gives way with a trembling breath.

Fuyutski nods, "That is good. It's all a bad dream, you know. We just can't wake up." He stares at the frozen final image of the ruined office, the blood pooled on the floor, the strange rictus ear-to-ear on Olivia Tennyson's death mask, the rows of teeth marks on her cheek, the dangling eye, people milling at the doorway. In at the kill, wanting to see the chaos. He imagines none of them are mourning. How right he is, he'll never know.

Sub-Commander Kozou Fuyutski snorts out a laugh, surprising himself more than the Captain.

"It's a bad dream."

* * *

A/N: This chapter went quite smoothly, I have to say. I did that whole first section with Misato and Rits in two days tops. Pleasing, you see. I'm having too much fun writing this piece. And I'd like to talk some about why I wrote what I did there. Not Misato wanting to take in Aki. That's a given. The woman is impulsive as all get out. What I'm talking about is the little bit of development I did in regards to her history with Ritsuko. We get very bare bones details, so I ran with it. I think there has to be something there in the past concerning their explosive arguments.

Something more than just the kids' lives at stake spurred these on. People died everyday in that show, she only threw down with Rits over the Pilots and usually just Shinji or Asuka. And they became very volatile toward the end. I figured there had to be something more in their pasts than Misato suddenly being altruistic toward the little child soldiers. So I made a flimsy excuse, vague enough to let the reader's mind go from there. That and all is cliché. Love it.

And man, I love writing up Fuyutski's sections for this piece. They take a little longer, but they're worth it.

Yes, I made a nod to Where the Wild Things Are.

And yes, I meant umber and mutism.

And yes _yes_, I made a shout out to Adam Kadmon's fic Filiation and his version of Misato's father, Shiro. Shameless fanboy I am. _Shameless._


	4. CIV

**Disclaimer**: This is a work of fan fiction. The author does not own anything concerning Gainax's IP Neon Genesis Evangelion. The company gives the word and this comes down.

_**Acceptable Losses**_

**C-IV**

2015

Central Dogma, Test Chamber 3

_Click-click _goes the pen_._

"—connection 331 steady. Start-up 1.1.73—"

Captain Katsuragi's pen clicks incessantly and communicates at the perfect frequency to fray the nerves of everyone gathered in OBOPS (Observation-Operations) after the fiftieth click. She's hardly paying attention to their ire. However, Katsuragi savors the subtle twitch growing in the corner of Ritsuko Akagi's lips. The doctor still carries a haggard gait, but she seems to be in far better spirits than last week's engagement.

_At least she's blond again. No more stringy mud and stress. _

The doctor arrived for the test with a vibrant, nearly platinum blonde head of hair. She looked more than normal, fresh-eyed, immaculately dressed, and ready to commit to the first live test of the M-Type equipment and Pilot. The first live test Headquarters had fielded since the First Children's incident.

"—tal signs steady to Sixth Children stand—"

Captain Katsuragi finds herself thinking about Rei Ayanami often. She thinks of Sub-Commander Fuyutski's words and of that morbid meeting in his office about the Sixth. Misato ignores the irritated glare Doctor Akagi gives her, eyes flicking from face to the depressed pen button.

That awful video tainted any effort at sleep. Haunted by plague dreams, Misato saw charnel houses and sick wards, dreamt of a slim white death slowly lowering its thumbs over her eyes to pry out the juicy pulp. It wore the thin, stinking, translucent cloak of a dying child. Captain Katsuragi wakes often with the sheets soaked and afterimage specters receding into the shadows of a locked closet.

"—internal temperatures nominal, no power spikes in—"

She wonders about Rei Ayanami now, sleeping in a stiff hospital bed. Perhaps it would have been a better gesture to ask for Rei, she thinks. The sad reality is they can't all be saved from their lives.

"—doses primed and ready, CO2 levels—"

_Click-click_ goes the pen.

A recent medical prognosis declared that the First would make a full recovery. Misato still wondered why she remained in the hospital. Shouldn't she be mostly healed by now?

Yet it is peace of mind and a good omen before this test with their newest pilot. If she can do anything like what unfolded in that video, it will be the end, or something so similar as to be no different. Will they even need Rei if it all goes to plan?

NERV wants to harness this decayed child and focus her and sic their pit-bull on the invaders from unearthly realms.

"—Children resting easy in Plug—"

That registers.

Captain Katsuragi shakes her head clear and watches a waterfall of interference flicker across the screen as the LCL charged. Aki's pale, unblinking face reappears seconds later, listing like a crippled ship. But Katsuragi notes how _alive_ the Children's eyes are. How hungry they are.

_Stepping lively aren't we, Aki?_

She had gone to visit Yamato earlier in the locker rooms on a whim. Wish her luck, offer a few words, she still doesn't know why. That's a lie.

Perhaps not the smartest move knowing what lies under the apathetic exterior, but she went. And Misato stopped cold when the door opened. There was utterly nothing out of the ordinary to the untrained eye. Walking in, she saw only the rows of shining lockers with NERV's army of one suiting up in a suit of flabby, burgundy-colored neoprene.

She was so _precise. _The Children had never shown this much energy except to scuttle into the closet.

Misato stood rigid with shock when she saw what appeared to be a luxurious tattoo on the little girl's bony back. A river of black lines sprawled across the Children's drooping shoulders, crawled down the spine with lesser waterways and tributaries fanning to the flanks and it tapered off at the river delta of on the small of her back. Maybe Scandinavian iconography or a new weird American fad like barbed wire tattoos, she thought.

Yet it was all wrong, too organic to be real ink.

Then it came to her—the stain.

Agent Carter's admission weeks ago replayed word for word followed up by a rolling wave of nausea.

The Captain _saw_ the Children then.

The vibrant red, serrated, smiley-face surgical scars peeked out from below the limp, stringy ponytail.

A breadcrumb trail of freckles wound down her left side, yet not the other, standing exultant against white canvas skin.

The chilling set of insertion scars to the left and right of her spine, each a tiny pinprick navel set an inch apart down either side, glistening wetly in the harsh fluorescent light.

The strange, almost happy sound came out of Aki's pinched features. It took the Operations Director a few minutes to realize the Sixth Children was humming an old, old nursery rhyme whose name escaped out the open door. Misato left without ever saying a word.

For that right there she's still angry with herself. A word of encouragement, she thinks. Any damn thing would have done well. Now they wait.

_Wouldn't it?_

"—M-Type plug is piggy-backed…assuming direct con—"

_Click-click_ goes the pen.

Out of the huge reinforced layers of safety glass (tested to withstand force and kinetic energy as well as steel can) stands the behemoth Test Type. Violet armor gleams in the even white light of the room and the giant casts no shadow. With Unit-00 still encased in a hard cyst of Bakelite, the long silent Unit-01 was deemed ready for Pilot Yamato's activation test. Though, the Captain's told, it would not be her assigned Evangelion Unit during combat when the rumored Third Children arrives.

Her Unit 04 hasn't seen completion or trial runs yet.

"—parasitic clamps locked, core program overwritten—"

Katsuragi sighs, fingers stilled, slipping the pen back into her breast pocket. She comes back to the waking world. Doctor Akagi issues a small sigh of relief at the cessation of noise warfare and strides up behind Lieutenant Ibuki.

"How is she looking, Maya?"

"All monitors nominal to the Sixth's profile. No abnormalities." Ibuki intones. Her fingers fly across the keyboard. "All the insertion devices are—we're green, ma'am."

The Operations Direction takes small comfort that she isn't the only one uncomfortable here. The Sixth stretches in the Plug, cracks her brittle knuckles, and sighs impatiently. That…surprises her. The captain says as much.

Akagi favors her with a shrug and glance over the shoulder.

"She's an addict, Misato. She knows what's in store. You know that," her voice barely audible. "Anything of note, Aoba?"

"Unit is quiet, won't know until it activates, ma'am." Aoba stares down at his console which is slaved to the main readout projected on the glass before them. For all intents and purposes…everything is okay. Ritsuko Akagi nods, smoothing her shining hair back, the right hand then hovers over the aspirin pocket, drifts away, and settles on her protégé's shoulder.

"Okay. Let's start. Emergency exits are already open and the countermeasures in place. Start the recorders. Unit-01 Activation Test, Doctor Ritsuko Akagi presiding, begins at 1600 hours exactly."

Out comes the pen again as Katsuragi watches the walls of the test chamber filter through the colors of the rainbow, settling to neutral gray. Lancets of white streak the wall. Aki visibly settles as the reinforced seat split down the middle. A strange aurora bleeds into the image. A hard crimson light spears the right corner of the screen before fading out. There's a strange pattern to the light. Fluid luminosity runs quicksilver quick over Aki's form and solidifies.

The illusion of a thousand hexagons ripples across the inner armor shell.

Reaching for the geometric heavens, Pilot Yamato begins to sing.

Misato closes her eyes and holds in a revolted shudder. _This is necessary. Get over it. _Simple truth…but what did it mean? What changes now? Is there even a threat out there to use this child against? There must be one; otherwise Hakone would not have been turned into a modern fortress with arsenal skyscrapers, twenty-three layers of reinforced titanium plating trailing down hundreds of meters to the dome a mile over their heads; complete reconnaissance satellite coverage, the very hills surrounding the city for twenty miles converted to lavishly camouflaged batteries of long-range American-made cruise missiles, and more non-nuclear firepower than has ever been assembled in one place since the Cold War.

Is there anything out there so fearsome that cannot be awed by that? She pictures four golden wings.

_It's screaming, dad. Did you hear it?_

A leaching numbness settles inside her gut. Feeling helpless is probably the one thing in life she allows herself to completely hate. And that's exactly what all of this is—helplessness. Watching, but not involved.

The test chamber glows with cold amber flames and quickly falls as dark as an eel's belly. The only light venturing in to that darkness is a cone of orange from OBOPS cast over the faceplate of the shrouded behemoth, throwing up strange shadows and giving impressions of movement in the deep.

"Launch."

A sudden hiss erupts in the video feed as the injectors leech onto the child's back.

Horror writes across a half-dozen faces when the Sixth lurches, violently vomiting something not unlike pancake batter before settling back in the chair. Unaffected by the globules of partially digested soba sliding along her cheeks, the filters pluck the offal out. The teenager gasps, growling, spitting, lips peeling back in a feral grin. Blackened veins crawl and leap out against her shockingly white skin. She leans forward to grip the butterfly controls with gloved hands.

"Is she…?"

"Maya, audio only channel, turn on the voice modifier. Now."

Lieutenant Ibuki nods, hands visibly shaking. She speaks, trying to add an insincere sweetness to the quaver in her voice.

"Aki, sweetie…"

"_Mom-maaaaa_…" says the Sixth, the single word a quivering vibrato.

Maya mutes the channel, closes her eyes, whispering a small prayer to stop the shakes. Makoto reaches over to place a calming hand on the First Lieutenant's shoulder. Ibuki jerks away, "I'm all right, Hyuga…I am all…_right._" Taking a deep breath, she keys in.

"Honey…what are you in the dark?"

"And we have activation!" Aoba calls out. "Core feedback loop nominal, pressure steady in the plug and all the readouts are…fine. I'm getting some _weird_ readings from the Unit, though…but nothing threatening."

Inside the test chamber, a pair of eyes gleams, winking in the pale orange rectangle from OBOPS, and sends up eerie winks of light. Light given off millions of years past from dying stars.

* * *

Evangelion Test Type, Unit-01

Aki slips inside her bolthole as the world goes white. The drugs seep into her eyes until the shock-cataracts formed. The ferryman's eyes, the technicians called it. Her body moved on instinct and blindsight. The Sixth Children crawls away with her ego to shake hands with her Id and to shirk away from the anima.

She finds the Room burning. A million pools of melted sand shine on the fading floor in dribbles of poison mercury. The reflections walk; they are free to do as they want for now. Synchronization guts the Room. There are no carrion men at the door, no hands, none of the giggling oil slicks. The dim twilight peeks through the bubbling wood obscuring cracked, dusty windows, casting oblong orange bars across a smoking floor. Little tallow dolls burn and weep in the fire.

Everything collapses in sparks and fury.

With a flash and the sound of birds screaming, Aki Yamato finds herself a stranger in a strange land. Her own mind is no man's land. Beyond the hidey-hole of the Room, she stands naked and alone, out with the beasts.

A stretch of lonely road wanders through a dim, smoky pine forest.

There is a pitted road, wending away in great heaps and crags leading off into a dark mist. The evergreen forest is silent. Ragged mandibles of mountains chew the sky in the hazy faraway. There comes soft rain. Exposed to the elements, she hears whispers swimming through that terrible mist. Voices a thousand light years away cry from the Hyades. People long gone, or things heard in passing, or things whispered in quiet friendship, or things being shouted in the present, so many tumbling words taking lovely shape and peeking out from behind all them big trees.

"Hee…"

Lost opportunities play out on the lonely road before her, erupting from the dark in great gouts of living charcoal ink. The slurry takes the shape of perfect three-dimensional mannequins standing in half-assed ranks. There's Jude. Behind him and three people to the left stands Maddy. Ophelia, Reese stand to either side of Aki. Little Naejima. The rest are smooth of face and lacking in many details. Aki grants herself something close to her memories of what guilt was. These were the vaunted saviors of mankind. These were Marduk's sacrifices toward the betterment of humanity.

A new era of warfare, they said. A glorious age and they would be the tip of the spear. One dull fucking spear—tipped with tin and rusting. Their perfect soldiers suffer from utter physical atrophy and their minds slowly decay with each new battle, each new test.

Aki knows how things filter out of the grease trap that is her brain. Noxious slurries of details, scents, even context, facial detail (all her plastic dolls, where did they go?), her favorite flower, those excruciatingly familiar faces melting in the fire, all of it gone. And with each injection test, they just clean out the trap a bit more.

She wanders down the craggy road. When the trap fills, she thinks, the forest blooms. All that rich food for thought, Aki Yamato laughs at her caged wit. Darkness may cloud her mind, but here is the path. A path that always has been and always will be in some shape or form. But there are gaps and canyons and pot holes in this place, both real and imagined.

Voices bubble up unbidden in a glee club of manic memory.

A couple of yards away, flowing and forming out of the mist, she sees Doctor Goodwin standing with a wraith. Her younger self—fleshier, livelier and not some ragged butcher's leavings stretched over a vampire's thin frame. Long ribbons of mist flutter from their bodies in a sudden breeze of anguished wails, smelling of burning hair and sausage. A projected training cartoon sprawls over the evergreen sentinels beside them babbling happily in a clown's voice, but she knew the real message underlying the multicolored retardant:

"_Kill them. Eat the cores."_

Yes, they always demand that they eat the cores of the snow-owl-ghosts. Sticky business. The shiny candy apples needs must be cut and the rich red syrup sucked out. Like juicy Starbursts at snack time…

"_Curling finger exercises, a fine motor control exercise, sure to aid in attack patterns one through fourteen. They're super-effective!" _the projection extols.

Neither the doctor nor his test subjects paid much attention to the day's lesson. Aki remembers Ophelia and Reese playing tag in the halls tabbed out of their skulls, stumbling into crates of fiberglass insulation.

Aki feels something in her throat click as the ghosts run down the dying road. It doesn't matter, only echoes, she thinks. Sinking, sloshing echoes try to breathe in all the black around her. She stays the course and walks along the pitted road. She focuses on the colossally arrogant fat man speaking to the bright-eyed child.

"_What is your theoretical synch ratio at half dosage, Aki?" Goodwin queries, stroking his impressive white whiskers, other hand resting on the top of his moon-sized stomach. He did love his Twinkies. _

"_Thirty-two, sir." _

_Was I really that tan? _Aki peers at them as they drift off into the mist. Voices trickle back from farther off now.

"_Full dosage?" _

Now, they're just a quiet whisper between synapses.

"_Fifty-seven."_

Anywhere and everywhere, the dead voices come and there's only the quietest whisper caressing the earlobe.

"_Excellent, child. There's hope for you yet. Would you like to go visit Ophelia? She's quite calm now."_

Now they're gone. Faded from sight and still Aki walks the road, by turns it becomes a skip.

_I'm dancing, Mother. I'm dancing for you and all those fucking Yushida-men and the woman with the violet hair. And I can't find the capacity to care. Look Ophelia, we're dancing with Jude!_

She cannot find solace or joy in the thought.

There's so much black fog, how can one ever find one's way back to the rolling hills? Cold and wandering in the lonely woods is never pleasant. A misty iodine rain sprays her, sticking to every exposed bit of skin, staining it. There are no shapes in this place, no shady woods, no distant mountains, no deer trails, no three-dimensionality, no Room. Everything becomes a blur as she walks further on.

_Am I out of my mind_? A nearby shadow curves back in on itself, spiraling, flexible as paper. A head full of spring rolls wrappers. The image makes her giggle, but the noise is stilted, nervous. The road disappears into arm-thick vines under her feet. The mist begins to glow in a brilliant shade of violet. The world turns to the immediate—the few feet of visible, glowing mist around her.

And soon, even that goes dark again. There is nothing. And that is good, she thinks. She shrugs. Where is God now? Hiding in the Room?

The Sixth listens to another distant wail, keening and high, like a tea kettle ready to blow its top. Soon, the pig squeal of a breaking train reaches her ears. The elongated coffin shape of a tram pulls to a fluid, silent stop. Everything moves like a low-budget nineties TV movie, sped up into the uncanny valley.

She blinks at the absurdity pulling through the darkness of her own mind and feels what moves between synapses long since euthanized and the inured nodes of pain and memory. Doors open with a polite bell, the abrupt sound catches the Sixth Children unaware; she falls back on her rear and looks in, trying to see through a harsh orange miasma.

Suddenly, she knows—better still, she _sees_.

There is another in here with her. There, sitting there with her hands folded, gazing at Aki with the prettiest smoky eyes.

"Hello."

Yamato walks inside.

* * *

NERV Central Hospital, ICU

Agent Ng walks back to the post with two cups of tepid coffee. None of the staff had put on a fresh brew in two shifts, the lazy pricks. Apparently medics preferred their caffeine to taste like boiled shit. At least there's cream to cover that up…mostly, he thinks.

Handing off the second paper cup to his partner, Ng sits in the chair just five feet from their post. Pilot Yamato's slept for thirty hours already. Physical strain, they say. Ng and his cohorts aren't paid to theorize on their Pilot's jobs or their general state of mind (the UN Treaty is quite clear on that), but Ng isn't sure. Sipping his sewer sludge, he ponders.

Carter had been quite aggravated when the news came in.

"_Big fucking surprise. The suits throw her in for more tests, what do they expect? They've read the personal files—we all have! Idiots." _

No, none of Carter's men are paid to care, but the rotation is quite protective of their silent ward. He sighs. It's so unprofessional. Detached is the name of the game. The men covering the First have zero issue there. Even the command staff's pool of agents has no issue. But things happen and here they were. Didn't really slow them down on their job, merely frustrated them when the kid is laid up for their collective superiors' blind fucking stupidity.

Thirty hours of near catatonia from a _test_? Pure horseshit. But what did he know? He's just some gaijin soldier with a nice suit and a gun.

"Doc finally come around?" He says after a few minutes of quiet reflection.

"Nah, Hiroki hasn't shown since 1023 hours," says Oglivy, the section newbie.

"Guess they're not worried."

"She's under a lot of pressure. I imagine it can fuck with anyone."

"She's under more than pressure, Misha," says Ng, chuckling. Russian diminutives always amused him. He downs the rest of his coffee. "Take twenty, I'll watch the door."

He stands and stretches and looks out the window at the motes of dust spiraling in the window down the hall. The blued light is broken only by the crossing silhouette of a nurse. All quiet. Oglivy slips down the break room, voice carrying off down the hall as he reported in.

Ng assumes a stance of polite attention, glancing at either end of the hall every minute or so and adjusting his throat mike on occasion.

Nine minutes pass. On his ninth check of the hall, there is a pale young woman standing next to him. Nearly backhanding her away out of instinct, Ng wills himself from taking any offensive movements. Slow, even breaths, Ng realizes at once he's treating her like Yamato. His heartbeat rapidly returns to its normal rate and he bites his cheek to not show any displeasure on being snuck up on by a fucking fourteen-year-old waif.

_Shit._

The First Children stares up at him impassively. He's never seen a human being be so completely vacant save his own charge laid up in the room behind them. He's met more expressive people amongst the FSB and the French Foreign Legion. Stone-cold killers, who could smile, cherish, cry, express rage, and had families. _Emotion._ There is a standing bet amongst the Section Two shifts that the First is autistic or a mute like the Sixth. Cruel, sure, but what can one expect from bodyguards? They're not paid to be kind.

"Evening, ma'am. Can I help you?"

She stares at him with a single red eye. A thick gauze patch held on by a thin piece of plaster covers the left eye and her right arm is in a silk sling.

Ng sighs, "Can I get you anything?"

"I would like inside, please."

Ng's eyebrows shot up. Well. Well, well.

"She's unconscious. My orders are no one other than E4 clearance allowed in."

"Commander Ikari will not mind." She produces a slim blue phone from her only pocket in the gown.

Ng sighs, not feeling up for demotion for not letting her in. And someone _will_ hang for this. Shit always rolls downhill. But orders were orders. He told her to dial. She does. And the Commander's placid (yet sluggish, freshly awakened) tones say she is allowed in after an update on the Sixth's condition.

"Do not allow Rei to linger. She must have bed rest. Is that understood, agent?"

"Yes, sir. Very good sir.'—he closes the phone, returning it—'I'll go on in with you, ten minutes, no more," he keys his mike. "Misha, I'm taking the First to the Sixth. Don't ask; just get down here to watch the door. I—look, get the number later; get your ass down here _now._ That's an order, greenhorn."

Agent Ng mutters something about 'pusshounds' and gestures to the First. Stepping aside, he keys the door. "Ma'am."

The First disappears inside when the hydraulic locks silently slide free. Ng shakes his head as he follows.

"_C'est la vie._" His smile is bitter.

* * *

Room 201

**-ADAM-**

The ghosts dance before her eyes.

Aki lies in the bed and stares at an all-too familiar ceiling. Stares through the thin ceiling tiles, the pipes, the wires, the other floors. She has done so for thirty-one hours now. Complete catatonia. And no one knows why except her. The soft beeps of the EKG and the EEG readouts show nothing out of the norm—her norm that is.

But the sound of the door opening and the strange presence suddenly near her dislodges a rusty gear and the machine begins to putter to life again. Little hills and jagged peaks appear in sickly green readouts for an eye blink. There is the subtle scent of blood in the antiseptic room. It almost offends Aki. She blinks, moisturizing long pruned eyes. Horrible irritation and the scent and taste of tears flood her senses, pushing her further into the waking world.

Tears leapt down onto the pillow in thin rivulets from twitching eyes. A sickly popping sound accompanied each shuttering of the eyelids.

It had been such a beautiful dream, she thinks. _It still is a dream._ Sitting in that tram… Yes, the train to nowhere, lit by a twilit sun, the dying sun which burns the sky and blackens the earth itself. It had been a good conversation. Hadn't it?

The presence is near her bed. White-as-the-driven-snow skin clad a cloak of fresh bandages, and staring straight at her. Rude little bitch, look at her.

The eyes begin to focus, the irises shutter to pinpricks and then blossom. A raspy, gurgling chuckle ushers from cracked lips.

The presence's eyes widen. Aki likes that, because she doesn't care for this new presence.

-**KILL**-

_Say it. Speak and I'll rip those red eyes out, Tennyson. Wait, no, your face is wrong. Not Tenny…_

-**CALM**-

Her hands twitch and search for an auto-injector that is not there. She needs the fire running wild inside her. Slowly, she looks up to see Ng-man leaving the room, calling for a nurse or some such nonsense. Why would her Shadow need one? Is he hurt? Poor Ng-man. She looks at the presence and takes in all the details.

And what more did _this woman_ want from her? And why was her hair _blue _now? And the barest hint of veins crawling under that translucent skin made her stomach churn. Creepy milk skin. And people say Aki is strange.

"We already spoke…earlier," she croaks, her throat clicks and closes for just a second. It hurts to talk. It always hurts to talk. Where the _fuck_ is her auto-tab? And why is this girl staring at her so? All that is said is true, as is everything incubating behind that damning red eye. This snow-owl knows the truth. They spoke on the tram. Stupid girl. Dumb as God and twice as ambivalent. No one ever likes their talks with her.

"I have never spoken with you, Pilot Yamato," the confusion in the girl's tomb-whisper annoys Aki. A discomforting fervor grips her heart, forcing the blood and the adrenaline through the veins. The forge bellows fan the flames and now they wait for the hammer to fall.

_Say it. SAY. IT._

"Yes, you…huh-have. In the train. In the_ train_…are you b-blind? It was in the train with you wearing your pretty. Little. Blouse." Aki lets out a sickly rattle. It hurt. Her eyes blaze with pain and something feverish. So much water to lubricate them, she can't keep up. Every time she blinks it away, more wells up and up. Drip-drip-drip! Strange. Her head is bracketed in a soggy semi-halo. Oh, how Maddy and Ophelia will cluck over this. Aki hates this girl for seeing a disgusting hurt.

"Are you ill, Pilot Yamato? You're—"

"The fuck do you care? You didn't care earlier, did _you_?" The albino furrows her brow at that, her tight little lips curving to a pissy half-moon frown.

"I do not know you."

"Liar…you're dead."

-**KILL**-

"I—"

"Dead."

"I am not d—"

"Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. DEAD. DEAD. DEAD. DEAD! DEAD! DEAD YOU FUCKING BITCH, _DEAD. HEAR ME NOW?! YOUR EYES WERE BLACK! HAIR BROWN! SKIN PINK! AND I WRAPPED MY HANDS AROUND YOUR NECK! __**DEAD**__!_"

Things grow very, very silent the world over in that instance. Not even the crickets outside chirr. A wind stirs a thin wave of fog from the hills and rolls its thin fingers through the wind-whispering trees outside. The presence's face fights to remain a Galatean mask of banality, but there's creeping horror—signs of life, Pygmalion!—brewing in the eyes and in the slight tremor of the fingers.

_Say I am not me._

"I—"

"You're dead inside," says the Sixth. "Like me. You can fade away now."

There are no more words needed.

* * *

"Make your report, Fuyutski."

They are role-playing their ominous Illuminati game today, he notes. Arrayed in front of him is a semi-circle of eleven [Audio Only] labeled monoliths. SEELE loves their games. Especially Kiel. The old man looks at SEELE-01.

"Our first activation test was, in fact, a complete success with the M-Type equipment," he states simply.

A long silence follows followed by quiet conversation rippling through the gathered monoliths. Here is another piece of the puzzle missing context.

Sub-Commander Kozou Fuyutski has no time for these pathetic games. He needs to speak with Ikari about the incident between the First and the Sixth. Undoubtedly the Commander knows, but it only drove home Kozou's belabored point of the stability of their new Pilot. And they have these men to thank. The questions he wants answers to lie with the men in this room, but with no inroads for that. What were the plays here? Who made the real decisions? Who demanded that their thinly veiled Dummy Program be accelerated two years ahead of schedule for _one_ serviceable pilot? And who sent that pilot to Tokyo-03 before the pilot's Evangelion Unit was even complete?

"We require a _full_ report, Fuyutski," SEELE-01 snaps. Lorenz Kiel, old as God Himself. No acknowledgement of Fuyutski's rank or even respecting his status as a doctor. Kiel never did respect anyone outside the confines of his mirror.

_And that is why you only have my contempt, you blind little mole. _

"Very well," he shrugs.

"As I stated, the activation test of Unit-01 was a success. The Sixth Children was inserted into the Evangelion with her M-Type equipment at 1600 on March 23rd—three days ago. Start up procedures ran…smoothly. The child was injected with a full combat dose of Codename Mix and exceeded all our expectations. Her heart-rate never climbed past ninety beats a minute. After injection, though, she became very coaxable and violent. The change was remarkable. Despite…an incident in the past, the Sixth is a mostly passive human being—withdrawn and mute. With the sedatives she's on and a much more stable atmosphere, we've seen little trouble from her.

"When Codename Mix was introduced into the bloodstream, the Children's demeanor changed and she became something…'—_closer to what she really is—'_…far more in line with the Project projections—a snarling animal wanting out of the cage. Brain activity surged, the shimmer protocol went into run down, and Lieutenant Ibuki began the phrase-activated trigger program. Her synchronization ratio was 45.8 percent'—a record for a first time start up—'and trials were held within the test chamber."

"Example?" whispers SEELE-08.

"Simple walking tests, one foot before the other to see if psychokinesis took effect during synchronization. Grappling tests, tests to see how she handles rapid momentum and high-gee maneuvering associated with A-Type equipment. For thirty minutes, Pilot Yamato engaged in combat simulations with Adam-class facsimiles…"

Briefly, Fuyutski sees Doctor Akagi's pale face when she related the Sixth's combat statistics and the accompanying in-Plug recorder. Very illuminating viewing.

"And?"

"She performed admirably and prosecuted combat operations with extreme prejudice."

Pleased murmurs emanate from the Committee.

"As far as her combat training goes, she's superb."

Open discussion now. They pat one another on the back for their _foresight_ and _wisdom_ in greenlighting Project-M. Fuyutski ignores the arrogant old men; nothing he can say will sway them. The axe hangs over _his _head, not theirs. It's why he was forced to join NERV to begin with.

_I myself am coaxable, Reiko. I am sorry for that._

He sighs and sees a sudden vision of burning Tokyo and the single human-shaped pile of ash, blowing away when the shockwave comes. Fuyutski shakes his head and comes back to the world.

He didn't think too much about the combat footage. The Sixth's technique is flawless and what they needed in a pilot. She had ripped the targets apart, even when their intelligence was dialed up for added difficulty. Granted, these were just tests against motes of light and digital imaging and all plans _do_ shatter in the face of enemy action…but.

But neither of the other Children fights with such vigor or brutal efficiency as he had been witness to. Rei is pragmatic, but slow on adaptation. And the Second Children, Pilot Soryu is a complete unknown, but the few trial runs from Germany showed the vagaries of promise. But elegant promise, nothing like the blunt-force trauma approach of the newest Children.

And there were other issues unveiled during the test.

Fuyutski clears his throat, "Gentlemen, if I may?" The quiet swallows up the room greedily. He takes their silence as leave to continue. "Ah, when the combat trail completed…she tried to consume the body. Tore at it like a wild animal. Why—"

The entire Committee save Kiel vanishes. The Old Man berates him thoroughly for bringing up such nonsense and the Deputy Commander is dismissed.

_Thank you for that, Kiel. _

* * *

NERV HQ, Geo-Front

"The Sixth Children…shouted at the First?"

"Yes, sir." Agent Ng stands at perfect attention, looking straight ahead at the opaque windows silhouetting the Commander of NERV.

"And what was the reaction?"

"None observed, sir. When we brought the doctor and nurses in, they were…quiet. The First stood there glaring at the Sixth. The Sixth merely stared up at the ceiling as she had been."

"But you saw her coming to when Pilot Ayanami entered?"

"Yes, sir."

The squelch of mass shifting on leather reach his ears. The Commander leans forward staring at him over those church-steeple fingers.

"Do you have any idea what was said?"

"The Sixth was screaming 'dead' or 'death' or something like that, sir. I couldn't quite discern what it was all about. The rest was muffled by how fast she was screaming. Then it stopped. Like that, switch was flipped or something. A few more words were traded…and that was it. Neither came to physical blows."

The Commander seems satisfied by the answer.

"Dismissed. Send for Carter."

Ng salutes and smartly gives an about-face, feet leading him toward the massive doors. His eyes fight to keep on the level and not look at that freakish tree on the ceiling. It did things to his head.

"Sergeant."

He froze, "Sir?"

"You never heard or saw any of the incidents, correct?"

"What incident, sir?" So easy to deny it all and turn on the blinders. The man in black steps out of the room with the Commander's approving nod. Ng still doesn't know what to make of the eerie stare the two Children shared when the First left the room.

* * *

"So the readouts show _nothing_ abnormal. I can't believe that, Maya."

"I'm telling you, ma'am, there's nothing here. I can't explain it. Look for yourself!" The lieutenant slides the inch-thick folder of test results over. Katsuragi makes a face and slides them back, ignoring Doctor Akagi's grin and Lieutenant Hyuga's sudden cough.

"I'll take your word on it. I just find it hard—very hard—to believe that Aki's forty-six hour stint in Central Hospital is due to physical stress. She's been adapted to this damn drug! How can any of it be against her previous experiences? We're doing it by the Second Branch playbook." Misato shakes her head, looking at the bound graphs, piles of brain EEG and biometrics, the purely technical readouts of the Evangelion itself.

"We're keeping an eye on her, Misato." Ristuko shrugs, taking another bite of spice cake. The mess hall is quiet at the late hour, Ichi and his staff was on break. The group help themselves to the tables of ready-made food. Katsuragi plucks at an uninspired salad of romano lettuce and kale.

"I know we're keeping an eye on her, but she came out of that thing catatonic. Isn't anyone here concerned about that development?"

It's Hyuga, surprisingly, who breaks the moment of silence.

"Ma'am, we are…but we have no answers. All the readouts show nothing wrong at all. It's…weird." How eloquent, Misato thinks.

"I should have asked Aoba to come along as well."

Maya clears her throat, "That wouldn't be highly unlikely unless you made it a direct order."

"Huh?"

Lieutenants Ibuki and Hyuga share a look.

"Aoba's kind of a dick," Hyuga says at last, not paying attention to his compatriot's painfully red cheeks. "He just doesn't associate with us outside of work all that often. We catch him at the Laundromat or the movies sometimes, but…eh. He'll clock out for his shift and just vanish." Hyuga's face is tired and his shrug languid. "I think he has family, a brother or something, in Minami. Maybe he heads there."

"Minami?" Doctor Akagi leans forward. "That's part of the fallout zone, what the hell is his family doing there?"

"They cleaned it up pretty well after the Valentine Treaty…" Maya adds weakly.

"I suppose. Minami was cleared for resettlement in 2009…" Akagi produces one a 520 and lights up. "Still odd. I did not know that about him. Huh. Hell, I don't really know much about Aoba."

"Yeah, neither do we," Hyuga says, subduing a slightly bitter tone. Maya simply shrugs.

"Back to the subject at hand," Katsuragi interjects, "he monitored the Eva during the test. I know those results are collected here as well, but I'd prefer to hear it from him."

"Jesus, Misato, give it a break," Akagi says between pulls of the slim. "We can't be sure of what anything does to Aki. A piece of Pocky could be doing her in for all we know. The staff at the Crèche just didn't record such things unless it actually happened to one of the subjects. They didn't care."

"Do _we_ care?" Maya asks. Wrong words, dear.

"For the love of—I have _had_ it with this roundabout nonsense," Ritsuko spits. The room stills, seemingly holding its breath "All this pointless moralizing does absolutely nothing for what we're here for. These machines cannot be piloted by anyone other than select child-candidates of the Marduk Institute. You _know _why we're here: to prevent something like Second Impact from ever happening again. We make do with what's at hand."

The doctor takes a long pull of her cigarette, a loose finger of ash falls to the tray. "Lives were destroyed _long_ before NERV or Project-E or M went active. What we do is incidental. Think about that too." The doctor takes another bite of her spice cake, chewing slowly, jaw muscles standing out taut and strained. Misato stares at her friend with a very level gaze, knowing any glib comment will overtake the precipice neither of them wishes to go near.

Shaking her head, Doctor Akagi throws the cake against the plastic tray and leaves the room swiftly. The other three sit and stare to one another for answers. There are, of course, none.

* * *

_She dreams of a twilit tram full-up with bending light and the fading ephemera of the dying red star enveloping the world outside the tram. The plastic children of her past rattle their heads with quick cracks of the neck in the seats around her. Two sit next to her, clasping her hands in cold factory-molded fingers. The boy rests his weary head on her shoulder and a mask of tragedy carved in his face. The girl a mask of mirth with ropes of clotted blood falling from still lips. _

_The woman-in-white sits across from her. _

"_Is this sufficient?" She asks._

_Aki mulls her words before speaking over a thickened tongue, "I-I have…have…have not heard th-the…I have not heard the words." _

"_There is an ending."_

"…_I know." _

"_All you have to do…is let go."_

"_I do not wish it." _

_The woman smiles warmly, it is a loving expression and Aki feels her eyes well up. _

"_It's okay to be afraid, little rose." _

"_Don't call muh…no, not th-that." _

"_There is no shame in it. You were meant to be called that. The title has purpose through you." _

"_Hate you." _

_She smiles again, a pearly, gleaming expression in the flares of starlight. _

_Aki feels the rain-on-a-tin-roof patter of blood hitting her left hand. A disturbingly warm bead runs into her palm, another hits her wrist, yet another hits her naked belly and traces along a distended vein running down from her navel. _

_On her right hand, the plastic boy is weeping and cannot stop. Aki wishes to smash that awful face in. _

_The woman's eyes widen. "You cannot. You know what the cost is." _

"_I…I didn't want this…"_

_The woman's face burns in the light and reforms as stone._

"_It was _your_ choice. Now regret is useless. Let go. Withdraw, Aki."_

"_Nuh-uh." _

_The woman-in-white shrugs. "Then wake and live in fear." _

Aki crashes awake in the middle of the cavernous hospital room, Room 201, swinging blackened fists wildly at strong hands trying to restrain her arms. People in coats and scrubs.

Her only words are loud and clear.

"GET THE FUCK OFF ME!"

It is some time before the NERV medical staff can sedate the Sixth Children.

* * *

A/N: Thrill at my mediocre offerings!

This one was a bit of a pain, not for ideas, I only had to do a few rewrites and was only really stumped once. Nah, this one was a pain from work. Stupid jobs and their paycheck trends. Barring any unforeseen consequences or snags, this story'll last probably three or four more chapters. No more than ten total at the outside.

And yes, shock-cataracts are some asspull of mine. I'm not proud, but it makes sense for my pseudo-magical Mix.


	5. CV

**Disclaimer**: This is a work of fan fiction. The author does not own anything concerning Gainax's IP Neon Genesis Evangelion. The company gives the word and this comes down.

_**Acceptable Losses**_

**C-V**

_Mario's_, Oromoru-1, Tokyo-03

They sit in a private corner booth. Their breath smells like cigarette ashes and old wine drunk from the bottle. It helps keep the death in them away.

Mario's, one of the city's most expensive eateries, hosts them. None of that plastic spork and warped tray business they were so used to. They're drunk and giggling. Sleeves rolled up. Glasses clink in the fifteenth toast to the service and atmosphere and, now, the waiter's tight ass. A pair of high heeled shoes teeters on the edge of the table. They toast them too. They watch them raptly, trying not to jostle the table. Barely contained giggles wrack their bodies. One falls over as the blonde tries to curl her legs underneath her lap.

The restaurant jumps as one with the uproarious laughter of sauced salarywomen.

Too much Shiraz, they think. There is time to savor the languor clouding their minds and sucking the tension right out of their muscles.

"How's the move going along?" is the new question of the hour. The Statement of the Shoes has run its course.

"Great! Great, yeah…got Pen-Pen's fridge in yesterday. Lots of bedroom stuff; some of the incidental shit. Haven't had time to really unpack. It's a shoebox filled with…more…boxes…" The woman mulls her words and frowns. "That was supposed to be way funnier. Kiss my ass, Rits."

"You're getting old, Misato," she says sagely, dodging a chucked hunk of complimentary bread.

Thus begins the search anew for fresh libations. The first bottle stands as a tired relic, as it always was. The second still has some life in it, yet, it, too, is dying. This is a battle the alcohol can only hope for the usual posthumous victory of blinding headaches and forgotten spans of time.

Misato refills the oval glass. _To hell with everyone else, it's drink time_.

Neither has had time enough to relax beyond six or fewer hours of sleep every night (or every few nights) in the three months since the Sixth Children's arrival. A menagerie of tests, accidents, blown budgets, new mountains of paperwork dominate their lives, not counting the million other little deaths of bureaucratic horror.

This is a night to unwind. A happenstance of scheduling and the fine tradition of lumping work on subordinates garner a two-day weekend for each woman.

Misato swirls the wine about, watching the sudden waves and breakers. Two days of not being a soldier or decision maker. Two days to unpack everything. Two days to enjoy her new apartment in peace. She pats her hip pocket and the piece of notary fresh from the desk of Gendo Ikari. Two days to settle her new roommate? Maybe.

Her nerves haven't settled. She went through with it.

_Still impulsive, Misato. Still very impulsive,_ says Father from the back of her mind.

"So, plans? Or is that still a bad word to you?"

"Fuggoff…I'm unpacking. You? ...Unlife?"

Ritsuko waves a dismissive hand. Then, "Two hours of paperwork and lounging with the cats. That's it. I must keep up pretentious airs. Maybe I'll read some poetry to cement my image more. Too long stuffed in a mainframe or checking on those damn kids."

"Oh, piss off. You _know_ what I mean! I know how you operate. You're going to head in to the city first thing tomorrow. Gonna find a nice entry plug dangling free to have a few depth tests with, huh?" Misato cackles when Ritsuko's cheeks flush as red as the wine.

"It's been too long for that. I will happ'ly claw that smile offa that smug face."

"Mm, you've tried before. Yeah."

They stare off into space, eyes fixed on the curtain shroud. "So, how have the Sixth and First been getting along since their lil' run—run in?" Misato feels the tingling in her fingers. Damn fine wine, but the world is starting to slow to a dangerous crawl. Not quite time to worry. Worry comes when the vapor trails appear.

"Oh, our lovebirds?" Ritsuko says, shrugging. A finger of ash plops into a leaf-shaped ashtray. "Rei avoids Aki like the plague. Whatever they said to one another…I don't know. They're not the most socially adept people in the first place. God alone knows what the meeting must have been like. It must be like two magnets coming together."

Neither of them was informed of exactly _what_ occurred, only that there was an _altercation_ which has since _resolved itself_. Worries write themselves plainly on Katsuragi's features. There easily could have been violence and injuries.

"Still tryin' to have Aki signed over to you? Go play mommy awhile?"

"Yeah! …Ah, yeah I think I am," Misato says, hand clasping the secreted slip of paper tightly. Ritsuko stares. "She's dangerous, unhinged, _whatever_. I… I know this. I've seen what happens when she's provoked. But the more I think about it…"

"No matter what you're dreamin' up …hear me out on this. This isn't some custody battle for a daughter. You're just lonely. I'm glad you've grown out of just fucking the loneliness away, but glorified adoption of a gaijin mental case isn't the best way either."

She sums up with a shrug. Misato feels a trifling need to reach across the table and slap the monotone out of the doctor's voice and punch the sudden clinical, detached look out of those brown eyes.

"No," she lies. "I'm talking…eh. You used to be _happy_, Ritsuko, especially when you were brunette. Fuck you."

Misato savors her last mouthful of Shiraz and opens the curtains. A sweet hint of plums might as well be ash. She ignores the hurt written plainly on Ritsuko's face. Fuck her, she'll get over it. Now is the best time to drop this particular bomb and have it over with.

_To hell with pragmatism._

"I've been taking the training and all of that…and I've finally been given the okay. She's coming home with me tomorrow."

"…I see."

* * *

Central Dogma, Temporary Personnel Quarters

The floor is cold and the air is pregnant with another force. 'In the air,' they say. That's it, change is in the air.

The Woman in the Khaki Coat told her to 'pack those bags!' and 'it's moving day!' She's too…cheerful, too _friendly. _Aki watches motes of dust spiral in their erratic flight paths.

There is no other movement. The world passes by.

Aki turns her head and stares at the ashen gray duffel bag sitting on the bed, faded after years of neglect tucked under her bed at the Crèche. There is nothing to pack.

Someone comes through to wash discarded clothing every day and her useless rags sit on the bed after they're returned, pressed and sealed. And someone else replaces the sheets on the bed. Telling someone bereft of possessions to 'pack those bags' is apparently considered polite.

She sits and stares at the sterile room; feet folded Indian-style about to use an anesthetic peace pipe. Careful, slightly trembling fingers open the feeder and slide in a small vial of succinylcholine. Only thing she could filch from the infirmary on short notice. Odd, she thinks. The auto-tab hungrily whirs as it feeds the vial in. This'll keep her fine and dandy for a few days.

Happy hour is around the corner.

She feels the weight of it and rolls the auto-tab on her fingers. It'll dole out the right kind of mental pink slip. Instead of the usual injection above the black sun pattern framing her navel, she places the tab's micro-needle into the dip of the right elbow and depresses the button. A probing, hot feeling slips inside her and thick, syrupy grunt pushes out of her.

Everything goes numb.

Her head smacks into the floor as the drug induces complete muscle paralysis. Only a fluttery smile creases her lips before her brain settles absentee and her eyes shift out of focus. She watches those wonderful Technicolor blemishes swimming through the heavy air. Iridescent ribbons shift and twist on the ceiling and seemingly seep out of the air vent.

She imagines herself on another world, full of light and puffy cloud-aliens.

Shifty hands paint colors on the room from a palette of firestorm sun to the dulled butane twilight by the time tactile sensation reignites in her spine and floods her limbs. The floor is cold. Her body covered in sweat.

Something aches in her abdomen. Muscles wrapped around the ribs feel like cold iron lames unwilling to bend. Such is the bad steel she's built of.

Brittle boned fingers grasp the slim blue-white injector. A press of a button, another dose ready. And down the rabbit hole she goes, tail singed. For the longest time, she falls. Hurtling through the crust of worlds, she feels the wind whipping through her hair and it burns her skin.

When everything stops, there is no Room. Nothing. Not even stands of lonely white pines. The darkness presses in tightly like wool. She floats in aether above a dark ocean.

There comes a sound of train bells.

_The train tromps along endless tracks. Ample seating this time. None of the rush hour regulars aboard. _

_They are alone and the Woman in White stares at Aki with the same smoky eyes screaming the same disappointment. The sun lingers outside. There is only a rusted orange light. There is no heat or need to sweat. Aki's chest feels tight, like sitting under miles of water, deep in the black, deep against the ancient shores. _

"_Nothing's changed. Why?" _

"_Fuck do you care?" _

"_Because I can? Let go, Aki." _

Insufferable bitch_._

_Aki shrugs. "No."_

"_Be that way for now. There's time. You're insane, you know."_

"_Mhm. What happened to the Room? I would like my bed back. I miss my mirrors." _

"_Funny that. You're like a cracked bell with a single keening note. You hate those mirrors. You're a scared little girl without a mommy, without friends, without hope. The tragic little demon. Boohoo. Just let go, Aki. Wake up."_

"_Is that supposed to _mean_ anything?" Aki asks. _

_The Woman in White grows silent in contemplation. Then, "Yes. Watch and see." _

"Bullshit" is her reply.

Aware again, she blinks away those pretty capillary fireworks from a flush of hard light.

Who turned on the overheads? Her eyes slam shut reflexively, trying to adjust to the sudden encore of the Fourth. She feels her legs moving, arms pumping, and a heavy weight on her shoulders—heavier on the left. The scent of clover registers in the grinding olfactory gears. A steady breeze stokes recognition.

_Geo-Front_.

"Excuse me?" The Khaki Woman (called e-book or something like that) turns to regard the Sixth Children.

Aki blinks, looking up at the young lady and at the little day park around her. Looking down, she sees the hard rubber soles of her plug suit carrying her after Bookie.

The dizziness hits Aki then, a violent head rush of adrenaline. Nausea floods her senses, packing deep into her stomach, then throbbing with blood trying to reach her brain. Plug suit dehumidifiers go into action as flash-sweat blooms over every inch of skin. Every muscle tenses up bullwhip tight ready to release the tell-tale crack, a sonic boom of instinctual violence to the unknown.

Aki's eyes widen with realization and fear. She's lost. Too fast, things passed by too fast.

_Where? _

The violet-haired one is at the end of the sidewalk by the car loop, sitting on the hood of that oddly angular car. Katsuragi-Captain smiles so widely, so prettily. Aki freezes.

"Couldn't have gotten her some _real_ clothes, Maya? We can't exactly take her out in the scrubs."

"I know, I know. She was…passed out in her room. So we took her to med—"

"Ho-…hau hau…how," Aki says, unable to spit it out. Both women look at the Children. Aki's face is aflame; the little muscles around her eyes and mouth straining to aid the tongue. See the stunted child with the thick tongue.

She was on the _train_ moments ago. She was laid out on the floor of her little cell getting high. That is what happened. Her eye begins to spasm when the Lieutenant takes a step forward; placing a finely fingered hand on a bony shoulder in what should be a comforting manner. Friendly-like.

"Aki?"

She looks up at the Bookie-woman and the perfect skin covering the offensive hand. The little hints of blue-tinted river-veins sneaking under the flesh, the hilly tendons, and the thin piece of webbing between the thumb and forefinger, and those perfectly sanded nails. It is absolutely covered in germs. This hand _touches_ her. A sensation of unnatural warmth seeps into Aki's skin, jerking at the whip. _Touches _her. Something old and true lit in Aki's veins.

"Penitence," Aki says. Yamato shudders, fingers hydraulically flexing at her side. "You…you sh-sh-shhhhhh-should be…penitent."

"Excuse me?"

"Shouldn't…do-do th-that…" the Sixth whispers. The lieutenant's hand doesn't move. Sudden lines of red fingernail polish seemingly overlay the present sheen. A needle sits between the fingers. The sharp, clean smell of alcohol fills Aki's nose and those haughty words from so long ago echo in her ears. Aki realizes this Ibuki-woman's panting like a marathon runner. Like prey. That slimy smooth hand hasn't moved off her shoulder in years. It must _go._

'_You know, Aki. I think I'd have made a good mum for you. I like broken things. Maybe I could fix your broken little brain, ha. Wouldn't that be something?'_

With a snarl, Aki lunges.

"Wh—" Maya's words become a high-pitched scream as Aki sinks her teeth into the white meat of the wrist. The woman's fingers curl reflexively like dead spider legs and burrow into the papery flesh of Aki's shoulder. A rich red wine of twenty-odd year vintage floods the valley of her mouth, saturating the tongue with a strong iron tang. Bit salty, but the meat's good. Meat's hard to worry though, especially the stringy gristle.

Chew chew chew.

_Snap._

The fingers go limp. She keeps screamin'.

* * *

NERV HQ, Geo-Front

"This incident cannot be ignored, Ikari."

"I realize." Gendo Ikari says, nonchalantly motioning to the affidavits stacked before him and a single piece of evidence placed in a plastic bag: a seven-inch long blue and white combi-pen. He slowly flips through the incident report. "Ridiculous. Ibuki knew the protocols. No physical contact. They took the girl to medical and didn't bother to check for narcotics. Foolish."

Deputy Commander Fuyutski shakes his head, sharing Ikari's sentiments. The combi-pen recovered from the Children's room should have alerted the on-duty medical officer. It had been left behind in the panic of calling for a stretcher.

The succinylcholine is an all-too bizarre punctuation mark on the matter. should have been down and out for a day with how much loaded her veins. Or dead. He looks at the attached photographs, the Sixth's haggard and bruised face covered in sheets of blood, the grisly photos of Maya Ibuki's mangled arm, the trampled shrubs where the two women had fallen and struggled during the attack.

Unless physical therapy and surgery hewed to the miraculous, Maya's career with NERV is over.

"Lieutenant Ibuki's hand is…salvageable," says the Commander, reviewing his own set of photos. He puts them aside and cautiously picks up the combi-pen in his gloved hands.

"In a golden age, perhaps. At least Maya isn't left-handed. The Sixth severed the radial ligament and nearly cost her movement of the left hand altogether with the…mastication. That thumb is a total loss. Convalescence alone will take months. What do you intend to _do_?"

"With the girl? Pilot Yamato is Pilot Status Revoked. Under the UN Treaty, she is suspended and due for court-martial. Seems she may get that asylum stay after all. Tests are hereby suspended and her access to this…charming device,'—he held up the combi-pen—'denied. I wonder how it even got in with her possessions. We'll sweat some sanity into her via cold turkey withdrawal. The only nourishment she'll receive is through an IV. Doctor Seba from Central will see to her medical needs."

"Are you sure?" Fuyutski says, feeling suddenly uncomfortable about everything.

"Yes. Akagi will not be allowed near the girl."

"The med-tech on shift who okayed the Sixth's, and I quote, 'nominal to profile' health?"

"Brought up on charges and subject to court-martial." Ikari throws the auto-tab down and watches it slide along the desk's surface. He stares at it for a time, stroking his beard.

Fuyutski pushes himself closer to the table, folding his hands atop the small stack of papers before him and waits for the rest.

"She will not leave that cell. This is the last straw. The Third is to be summoned soon."

_Too bad it took a maiming to finally realize what I've been saying all along. _Fuyutski kept his words close, hiding that pair of fives for later. He waits. And waits longer still in the strange silence that begins to drink in words like the cavernous office they sit in drinks up light. The Sephirotic Tree glows overhead, seemingly _flowing_ through the marble in coppery curlicues and runnels of stylized script. At length, Kozou ventured the more important question.

"What of the Committee's plans for the Sixth? Do we _know_ anything new? Is there control over the situation?"

Ikari says nothing.

* * *

Geo-Front, NERV Central Hospital

_So close. So_ goddamn_ close. _

Misato buries a face pale as milk into twitching hands. She and Akagi sit on lumpy cushioned chairs in a plain white-washed waiting room. They have not spoken in almost five hours. Misato's skin feels feverish. This is too much insanity to handle.

_So. Close. _

There's a painful ache from the scar tissue running down between her breasts that dovetails nicely with her current crisis. She feels like weeping. Be quit of the utter frustration and anger coiled up inside her. It isn't fair. None of it is. It'd have been a happy home for the girl. A place to rest. A place to escape from the frightful nature of things Aki cannot understand.

She knows this.

And it all went wrong. Horrendously wrong. Maya startled Aki and lost her hand for it.

_Goddammit._

It took four people and a taser to pry Pilot Yamato's locked jaw off of Maya's mangled wrist. It looked like Impact. The wrist's skin was shiny, taut, covered in gnarled half-moon bite patterns. The forearm was virtually painted red with blood and tapering down to a peek of yellowed bone. Blood seeped here, flowed and gushed there. First aid did little to calm Maya. Her screams lessened to thick, gurgling moans by the time the medics arrived. She convulsed frightfully. Shock took hold. The look in Maya's eyes stayed with Misato and would not leave. How could it all go so wrong? They'd been so close to setting things on a proper track for Aki. And what of her own happiness?

Aki had been tasered, cuffed, and dragged along the concrete like a chewed bone. She looked ripped right out of a Bosch painting. A wide bib of blood gleamed wetly on her chest and all her eyes gave hints of was dull surprise. The stink of blood drove off the fresh air coming in from the hills. Aki spit out a gamey piece of Maya's wrist. All the captain could think of was chewed up tuna and then everything just came rushing out of her guts.

The moment remains picture perfect. The psychiatrists will have a ball just trying to peel away the layers of Aki's mind. They always enjoy the dissection.

And what is 'home', they'll ask. What do you dream about? Oh, that still affects you? Let's talk about that. And what did you think of that? You initiated the encounter? Intriguing prospect—

Katsuragi coughs.

_A few more seconds and she'd have been in the car giving me the quiet routine. I could handle that. I got a room ready for you, kid. Made a little friggin' sign for your door and everything. We'd have gone home; over time she'd open up with some banter over her new room or a change of clothes…it'd have been fine. All okay. Then she'd just come awake soon after that. All okay._

Misato _knows_ this.

"Jesus _Christ_." She says, groaning.

"…won't be helping us here." Ritsuko mutters, eyes distant, looking in the direction of the ceiling tiles. There were many reasons for the heavy guard outside Aki Yamato's cell. Misato wasn't sure where Ritsuko kept her gun.

"No one saw it coming, Rits."

"I know. So, how did you think this would play out? Your little adoption, I mean," she says, still staring off at the past and present laid out in ceiling tile. "I didn't see it crippling my protégé."

"I…I-I didn't," Misato fails. What do you say at a time like this? "It's no one's fault. We were just—"

"Don't. Don't make excuses. Just… Don't talk to me right now."

Misato sighs heavily and plants her face in clammy palms once more. Artificial hopes backed up with drive amount to nothing. All of expectation becomes a useless exercise in mental faculty. Father would be disappointed in how easily it unraveled.

_So close. _

"Fuck."

* * *

**Two weeks later…**

NERV HQ, Holding Area G6, Cell 13

Aki thinks about this second and, by extension, this hour. What differentiates the two? A clever man would say "one is the lesser of the other" and be swiftly laughed at and along with by his peers. What of these aberrations of space-time when applied to total sensory deprivation? Sitting in a dark cell, for instance, thinking of the condition of the universe because every garbled though running through a mind can, for a brief moment, spring into a run of perfect logical thought.

Only perfect enough to form a Rorschach odd enough to be called normal looking in the right light. In a constricted cell no smaller than a shoebox or larger than a walk-in closet, with a shroud of darkness so thick that all she can see is the spreading bloom and drumbeats of blood running behind her eyelids, time becomes a meaningless thing.

Seconds, hours, both are interchangeable in the quiet moments. No sound, no movement, no thought, no expectation. The mind wanders to odd thoughts. Sixty hours per minute, sixty minutes per second, that sort of thinking. Her head hurts from thinking about it. Whatever they're feeding her through the IV makes it worse.

A cool, stinging pain, constant and unremorseful, plagues her at all hours of awareness. Her cheeks haven't stopped tingling since she came here. Something keeps tugging at her side.

-**CALM**-

Withdrawal has come and gone and covered the floor in vomit several times since. Another piece of lucidity is plucked from the gibbering mess curled up on the floor. It begins to move with the power of the thought and the sharpness of mnemonic taste. Twenty seconds have past since she woke. Each hour passes with agonizing slowness. Aki can't even recall what an hour and second really pertain to. But the _taste_ is there now. The taste is strong and rich on her dry tongue and gives her driftwood to cling to.

Aki wants a Quu.

Not water or glucose or soya, just a grape Quu colder than Greenland. That would be heavenly. Part of her knows she'll never see a canned drink again. This place really is the new Crèche. And everyone's become Yushida-man. This dank, hollow concrete shell they have placed her in is the end of the line.

The Apple and Fig is emblazoned upon the wall she sits against. There's no auto-tab to take away all the dreary hours. She's long since shed her clothes and felt remarkably at home under the thin cotton sheets of the bread-rack sleeping foldout. In a way, it's expected that she would end up in another cell. In a vague way, it's all rather pleasant. Familiar. What did the outside offer? She will miss the lake and the scent of clover, sure. The stern, flat faces of her Shadows standing outside make her sad.

And that makes her hate them.

Disappointment, she thinks, lies behind the dark shades over each man's eyes. Ng-man and Carter-man's silence especially bothers her. Their anger is there. Their posture and body language scream it.

-**BELLIGERANCE**-

Carter's shiny taser hurt and the painful burn marks on her neck are disappointment in its realest form. The aloe salve spread over the pronged, peeling patches of skin stick clotted ropes of hair against the bottom of her neck. They threw her in here like a garbage bag. Part of her wish she popped like an overfull one. Splatter and spill out all over the floor.

And then there is that red-eyed wraith. Coming and going, coming and going. Watching and waiting, watching and waiting.

Aki watches _her_ too, when the door opens up for the slim seconds when they replace the IV or clean her up. When the mag-locks hum open and the door slides back, there she is sitting in a rickety chair reading some dog-eared novel. And staring. Face blank. Eyes dead. The picture of life sucked up and out and bagged to be put in a larder for winter.

Ayanami's a _mirror_ in the flesh (heh heh). Aki's mimic, painted oddly and with weird contacts. She wonders if Ayanami would kneel.

-**PENITENCE**-

The thought quiets her racing mind. Her fingers trace along the rough texture of the concrete walls, tracing the everlasting words of 'God', 'Heaven', and the classic 'All's Well'. She smiles, curling in her lips, chewing on them and fighting back a laugh.

What a crock of shit.

"Nooooo God. None. Just scared men with needles in His place! Melted Him down like wax, made a candle out of Him. Then he said I to the world!"

Her words seemingly whisper back to her in the dark, from all angles and reasons.

_Ghosts got in, got in, got in. I. __I__._

_**I**_.

Everything moves at speed, yet there is nothing to see. Her mind can't rest. The withdrawal won't allow it. The haze and hunger for Mix is dying, the fog's gone from the forest. The swimming capillary blooms are reaching closer. Floating balloons with minds that hunger for closeness drift by. The tingling in her cheeks grows to numbness.

"I. I. I." She knew God once. He left. Never came back and made her house burn down and all her friends run away. So much fire.

She thinks of the pale wraith sitting on the other side of the bulkhead. A name and face briefly flick through the rotting passageways in her mind. _Hisako. _There it goes, running away with a cheery laugh, hand-in-hand with God. Both are soon lost in the highways and rotted synapses. She tried to take him. Some best friend she was. The passages empty and fill to the brim with sewer water from the drains set in the floor. Everything hurts and clears. None of it is making sense. Too many hours between the seconds.

_Just keep smiling, Aki. Don't be so down. _

-**CALM**-

Aki sighs, "Hisako. Here we are again. You'd like her, Ophelia."

_Yes_, answers the darkness.

"Here we are." Something slides up beside her in the dark. The presence is there, waiting. The tugging at her side grows insistent. Aki's head rolls up and peers into the darkness where a shadow beyond the darkness stands above her. She freezes and feels her heart spool up in her chest painfully. Sweat breaks out instantly across her body.

_Let go, Aki. _

The Woman in White leans down to look the sober girl dead in the eye. That smooth, too-perfect face looks at her pleadingly.

_Please._

"Just…just let me sleep." She tugs the covers over her head and curls into a small ball. There is a clawing sensation in her gut. She needs the tab. Needs it now. She can sleep then. Just one hit and it'll all clear up and things will be okay. No need to abrogate the touch of who she is. If the controls go away…no one's safe.

_No. No one will be safe._ _We have come this far, we can go further. We _will_ go further. You're mad, but you can let go. This isn't the place for you. It is the end._

Aki clamps her hands over her ears, not willing to hear the lies of this opium ghost.

_You'll know it soon. _

Seconds bleed to hours again, the world rights itself.

She dares not peek out until the nurses come to check up on her. Vapid, doughy, and their fingers are icicles. They fuss and clean and wipe away the filth from her skin. They chat about the latest news on Amuro's farewell concert in Tokyo-02 next month. The name barely registers in Aki's head, but on a subconscious wavelength, a red-flag goes up.

Sobriety is making everything hazy and she exerts a titanic show of will to understand.

Aki looks in the heavy shadows of the corner, ignoring the wraith watching her from the chair outside the cell. No novel this time, her hands neatly fold in lap, eyes alive and wary. Very good. The nurses will later talk about how peaceful and abnormally calm the Sixth was. The First Children makes notes of the confused, almost lucid state of the Sixth's actions. The fact that her stare is not being met only makes it stranger.

But they didn't see, couldn't see what the Sixth is looking at in those dark corners: that single chair underneath the harsh overhead lights. Aki shivers and recalls her Room and the ghosts who battered her door. The chair always waited beyond that door. The reality of her mind bends and breaks at her whim to keep away from it. The chair waited at the end of that desolate path through the foggy woods. Her fortresses were crumbling and mind waking up.

Soon, she will go and decide. And then there will be the terrible silence again. And her only company will be red memories.

* * *

A/N: Dear God, chapter done. This chapter was slow in coming, mea culpa. After a few hurdles and scene re-writes, I like it. Mostly. Honestly, I think it's a pile of crap, but for what it is…not _too bad. _A lovely tar covered piece of writing.

I'd like to address a complaint I've received. A minor one, but I can understand where he's coming from. I'm not exactly writing out Aki's sections like a Hollywood scribe desperate to be edgy by throwing Weird-a-Minute™ at you. It's just how her sections work out. You must understand one thing: it's Aki's story. And I'm writing what amuses me.

This isn't completely about being creepy; it's about exploring the bizarre little noggin of Aki. Am I doing it effectively? Most likely not, but I don't really care. I'm having fun. And there's actually a point to all of it, which is coming.

The horror aspect (to me) of this thing is Aki being trapped within her own perceptions. She's fucked in the head and she sees the world through a very dark glass. The broken record aspect isn't an oversight.

It's just how the story goes.


End file.
